Sister Bertha Robertson died last week in Emmitsburg,
about six months short of her hundredth birthday.
She had been in our community for 80 years.
I knew her first through her niece, Susan, my college
classmate and good friend. I met Sister Bertha when I joined the community in
1978.
She was a remarkable woman among remarkable women – never
a “big name” in the community, always accomplishing invaluable tasks behind the
scenes. She was very talented – a musician, a businesswoman, an administrator,
but she never held down any titled positions.
She came from a remarkable family, too. On her father’s
side, she was related to both Francis Scott Key and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her
mother was the first harpist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
She put what could have been a privileged and prestigious
life behind her without a second thought when she fell in love with God and the
Daughters of Charity at 19. I don’t think she had an ambitious or conniving
bone in her body.
Back in 1995, one of our sisters, an historian, took an
oral history from Sister Bertha, and I am reading it now. It is amazing. Sister Bertha was one of two sisters in 1964
in the US ( they worked in Central
Purchasing) who made the arrangements for our new habits to be made. The design
came from the Motherhouse in Paris, and every Daughter of Charity was to change
from the old cornette habit ( which the sisters had worn since 1633) into this
new one on the same day all over the world in 1964. The arrangements were being made in May and
June, and the company making the habits were supposed to be able to make over
800 of them in different sizes by September 20, 1964. It’s quite a story.
This will be the first installment about Sister Bertha.
I’ll talk more about her in later posts.
I might even write some poems about her.
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