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By Priscilla Greear, Staff Writer
ATLANTA—At her 90th birthday party last August, Sister
Marcella Meyer, CSJ, received a surprise visit from 100-year-old Lizzie Easter,
a poor woman the nun had helped for some 20 years by collecting money for needs
ranging from renovating her ramshackle Fairburn cottage to burying her husband.
“It was a surprise, and when I saw that elderly little lady
being wheeled in, I think everybody in the building heard me holler. That made
my birthday. We were so happy to see her again,” Sister Meyer recalled.
After that birthday Sister Meyer had to hand over her car keys and
stop driving. But she found other ways to serve. She had a friend take her to
deliver food baskets to the poor at Thanksgiving and Christmas, as she had done
for several years, and she began taking a taxi to daily Mass.
The Atlanta-born nun, who moved this January to the order’s
assisted living community in St. Louis, touched countless lives in nearly 70
years of service in Georgia. She spent 44 years as a teacher and administrator
in Catholic schools, eight as an outreach worker for Catholic Social Services
and 15 more serving the elderly poor and sick in Atlanta.
“When you hit 90, they won’t insure you anymore.
That’s why I’m in St. Louis,” she said, adding, “I just
have to pray that somebody else will take over” the care of the
city’s elderly poor.
Her vocation was shaped as she grew up in St. Anthony’s
Parish and attended the parish school and Sacred Heart School in Atlanta, where
she was taught by Sisters of St. Joseph. Their example and the locale of the
order, which then had a province in Georgia, attracted her to its strict
discipline. Her mother insisted she first date and get a job, but after holding
out until she was 21, she signed on.
Prior to Vatican II, she was unable to leave the convent without a
companion and wore a habit. “It took me a while to give up that habit. I
loved that habit,” she recalled.
Sister Meyer taught first through eighth grades across Georgia,
from Valdosta to Brunswick. In Atlanta she served at Blessed Sacrament School,
St. Anthony’s and the Village of St. Joseph. A highlight was the “six
solid years” she spent as teacher and administrator at St. Anthony’s.
As her alma mater had many children from Ft. McPherson, the nun initiated a
military program to foster discipline.
“In my nature I love the military, but the Lord didn’t
direct me that way,” she said. She even held an honors recognition program
at Ft. McPherson where “for the first time in history we got to use the
parade grounds for our commencement exercises.”
Her love of the poor grew early. At St. Anthony’s she began
helping a family with about five children by providing them with free uniforms
and school lunches and leftover cafeteria food for dinner.
“They’re still thanking us for what we did 25 years ago.
They’ve all done well, every one of them,” Sister Meyer said.
“Whatever we did in those days was hidden with no recognition. I just feel
that the hand of God was with us all those years.”
Her ministry flowed from her love of God and neighbor, which
can’t be separated.
“You may be rejected and you just say a prayer and don’t
worry about it,” she said. “I’ve learned that over the
years.”
School desegregation was beginning when she served at St.
Anthony’s and Blessed Sacrament, which she recalled as peaceful places.
While growing up in Atlanta, she always played with black children while
accepting official segregation, but “woke up gradually to the injustice
that was there.”
From her time working at the St. Joseph Home in Washington, Ga.,
she recalls long walks with the boys dressed in their Sunday best to the local
movie theatre and hiking up her habit and rounding up the boys to bring in
bundles of hay from the school farm. “I loved those boys. I’m
inclined to boys,” she said.
She was quickest to recall her days with CSS on the road in metro
Atlanta serving the black, elderly poor with her partner in charity, Sister
Roberta Sutton, CSJ. In 1990 they were honored by the Christian Council of
Metropolitan Atlanta with the Mrs. Fred W. Patterson Award for service. After
officially retiring from CSS, Sister Meyer said she “just kept the
list” of people to serve and continued the ministry.
“They were the most beautiful people I dealt with. They just
stirred my heart. We loved them,” she said.
“When we had a call to go to, we went. Even in the middle of
the night we’d go. One lady, her husband was dying and we sat there in the
hospital all night long with her. These were the kinds of things we did. We
didn’t have hours. Whenever we were needed, we went.”
“I want to thank St. Vincent de Paul. Without them I would
not have had money to give people for gas and whatever bills they had they were
threatening to turn off. I had four to five churches with SVDP that sent me a
check every month and that kept me on the road,” she said. “When we
came in, it seemed to brighten things up. I don’t know why.”
She talked about the privilege of serving God’s poor, who
never complained.
“I just loved every one of them. They taught me very many
things. They were always happy. The people we worked with, they had no
complaints. They accepted everything from God—what God wanted—that
was their attitude. It was beautiful—spiritually rewarding for me. I
treasured that opportunity to work with that type of people,” she said.
She first visited Lizzie Easter and her husband one
“Hotlanta” summer delivering fans to their ramshackle home. That
began years of helping the couple with things like getting running water and
building a bath.
“Over the months we got her a washing machine so she
wouldn’t have to be bending over ... a refrigerator ... a new stove. We
did the whole thing, but it was gradual. We had to get the money,” she
said.
“You have to experience (poverty), to let it teach you. You
don’t think it goes on,” she said. “I think we still have to
make amends. We have to do a lot of work in that line. We hold on to what we
have and don’t share it.”
Sister Angela Abood, CSJ, who had Sister Meyer as her first
superior at St. Joseph’s Home, spoke of “her devotion to the
kids.”
“We didn’t have a lot of money. She had to scrape by and
make do. She worked it out that we got enough for those kids, but we had
nothing ... She was stern with them but very gentle. She had rules, but if they
didn’t keep it the punishment was never so rigid.”
Sister Meyer counseled Sister Abood when she was ready to throw in
the towel.
“She always told me to be positive, not negative. I’m a
very impatient person,” she said. “She said, ‘You’ll be
able to do it,’ and I did. I learned to love the boys as much as she
did.”
Living with Sister Meyer in retirement, Sister Abood admired her
perseverance in service. Just before leaving for St. Louis, she still baked
sweets monthly for residents and gave one woman a ride to the doctor.
“Everybody in the building knew Sister Marcella and there are
300 people here. In the end she baked, made candy and put (treats) at every
person’s door.”
“Her greatest gift was doing for others—especially for
the poor—and she never stopped doing it and she may still be doing
it,” Sister Abood said. “She was very much fun—always meeting
you with a smile, always gracious. I’m not saying she was always perfect.
I used to get angry with her a lot. I’d say, ‘Marcella. You
can’t keep doing this. You’re gonna kill yourself.’ She’d
say, ‘I’m gonna keep doing this to help these people’... She was
just an all-around dedicated person to her church and her community, which was
the Sisters of St. Joseph, and the people she ministered to.”
Sister Loretta Costa, CSJ, said that her spirit shone most
brightly when working for CSS.
“I admired her for what she did. She kind of would go out on
a limb for things. She and Sister Roberta, they were like Ike and Mike. She
would go into areas that you wouldn’t catch me in with a big black
bulldog. She’s an unusual lady.”
Sister Costa taught at St. Anthony’s when Sister Meyer was at
the helm. “She was very just, very fair in her dealings with kids even
when she had to punish them ... She ran a very, very good school.”
Sister Sutton, who now also lives in St. Louis, said her best
friend never refused anybody.
“She put up with me and was a wonderful person and ... good
to everybody and nobody was ever turned down no matter what the problem was.
She’d find the answer. We had good times at CSS.”
Sister Meyer is happy to be living with her community in St.
Louis, but Georgia will be forever on her mind.
“I love it here. I’m having Mass in the chapel. I’m
very happy here, but I miss (Georgia). You can’t help but miss people
you’ve been associated with all your life,” she said. “None of
our work was a hardship. I reminisce on it all the time and it picks me
up.” |
