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Dear Notre Dame Academy Advancement and Alumni Relations Office and Community,

I find myself today lost in reflection, in prayer, and in memory.  It was only last night when my brother Bob sent me the obituary notice telling me that I had lost my beloved Anna Marie Evans, my dear Sister Mary Charlanne.  I know—and she knows—that if I could have, I would have jumped into the car and driven from Chicago to honor her at her Mass of Remembrance today.  I love her—loved her—that much.  Unfortunately, I am recovering from surgery and am not able to travel.

Her loss comes as a bit of a surprise, for I had just spoken to her the Saturday before New Year’s.  I called to see if she wanted visitors before my husband and I left Cincinnati after my annual post-Christmas family gathering.  She said that she was not feeling well, and could not keep anything down, so was not up for one.  I added that I could not afford to get sick and have to cancel my Tuesday surgery date.  We caught up, but soon ended our call with my saying, “You know I love you” and her saying the same.  Little did I know this would be our last exchange.  Glad am I that I said these very words to her, for these words speak truth.

Anna Marie was the one who championed my nomination for NDA’s Women Making a Difference.  (And whenever Anna Marie set her mind to something, she never let go!)  While certainly honored, I note that there is great irony in my selection, because outside my family, Anna Marie Evans was the woman who made the most difference in my life.  It is no exaggeration to say that she singlehandedly changed the entire direction of my young self and my future.  It was she who first called on this terribly backward and shy young girl in English class.  Sister was trying to recruit in her freshman classes for a speech tournament for junior high students.  After explaining all of the various events, she boldly stated, “If no one volunteers, I will have to draft people…Are there any questions?”  I actually raised my hand—my first time ever doing so up to that point.  Oh, I never spoke in class unless the nuns called on me.  She looked surprised and said, “Yes, Pat?”  (I did not even have the courage let the nuns know that this “Patricia” went by “Patty” and not by “Pat” when they first called my name from their class rosters.)  I then timidly whispered, “Sister, if we get drafted and do not want to go, can we burn our draft cards?”  Keep in mind:  this was in the fall of 1967, the height of the Vietnam War protests.  She stood there shocked—oh, not at what I had said, but that I said anything at all.  She soon burst out in her hearty laughter, repeated my words for the entire class to hear, who also laughed out loud.  She told me years later, “I did not know that you could even speak, let alone have a sense of humor.”  That very moment marked my turning point.  Sister recruited me for the humorous interpretation competition for the National Forensic League team, which led to dramatic interpretation, and eventually to our founding of NDA’s chapter of the International Thespian Society.  (Its existence today at NDA gives me such quiet joy and satisfaction.) None of this would have happened without Sister Mary Charlanne.  

She was my second mother—and more.  She was my gateway to a wider world beyond the comforts of home.  At times I think I saw her more than I did my own mother, and spent more time in her classroom after school than I did in my own bedroom.  The hours of driving across the state to speech tournaments were great and joyful adventures, with her and with other marvelous women on this team.  

Those adventures took Sister and me all the way to Stanford University for the NFL’s National Tournament.  It was the first trip to California either of us had made.  And it was the first time this convent-bred woman, housed on the campus in a men’s dormitory for the tournament, had ever seen some rather, how shall I say, mundane sights.  When asked how she enjoyed her dorm room, she announced to the Kentucky delegation’s competitors and coaches at breakfast that she had to rise before dawn to shower before others got up and saw her, and that she found “the footbaths in the lavatories interesting.”  After all the polite silence and awkward looks around us at the table, I was the one that had to tell her what these “footbaths” really were.  It was a spectacular, magical trip, including a drive to the solemn majesty of Muir Woods and its cathedral of the great redwoods.  I also remember how the flower vendors in San Francisco would come up to her on the street and hand her fresh bouquets, a thank-you gesture I learned from one for what the nuns had done in the recovery during the great earthquake there.  They were honoring the sacrifice and gift that these women who chose this life of service were to the world.

My four years of high school were a time of great change, in myself, at NDA and in the world.  I was not the only one who changed then, for Sister did too.  At the start of my freshman year she was dressed in full habit—a wimple that tightly surrounded her face with starched white ruffles, a floor-length black dress, and a loud, clicking, gigantic rosary that hung over her roped belt.  One day out of the blue she and the rest of the nuns showed up for school in brand new garb, leaving us girls all thunderstruck.  Our Sisters actually had hair, a wide band of which showed now at the front of a simple wimple, and legs that now appeared beneath their modest below-the-knees skirts.  They were the living embodiment of the whole post-Vatican II era that our evolving Catholic Church was undertaking at that pivotal time in history.  

Sister and I kept in touch after my graduation, and I remember around the time of my college graduation in 1975 when she told me that she too was graduating of sorts.  She was leaving the convent, the only life she had known since she was a teenager, for she was no longer content to have her choices directed by someone else rather than herself—an echo of what my own generation of women were experiencing in the nascent women’s movement.  She may have left the convent, but she neither left her faith nor the faithful sisterhood forged with kindred spirits at NDA.  They were more than sisters, and devoted to each other until the end of their days.  

She never had children, but she gave birth to me, and undoubtedly many others. She was a midwife for ours minds, confidence and creativity.  Her unbroken devotion to my success and growth over almost 50 years of knowing her was unparalleled.  Her belief in my potential never waned.  She was the one who first uttered the words, “Patty, you need to study theater in college, and you need to do that at Northwestern University.”  It was Sister who quelled my nervous parents about this college that they had never heard of, located in a big city they did not know.  Their fears were that if I went to this college I would never come back home. 

I guess they were right, for I never moved back to Greater Cincinnati, but Sister was right that I needed to be in this great, diverse city where I have made my personal, spiritual and professional home ever since.  It was here that I met my husband, a Jew, and it was at our wedding that Anna Marie embraced me, and said how proud she was of my Hebrew when I said The Sh’ma in our ceremony.  Then she added, “Did you ever know that my father was Jewish?”  We cried together in that moment, and she hugged my new husband with an affection and acceptance that welcomed him into her expansive heart, and vice versa.  She cheered us on with maternal pride when we started our Catholic-Jewish Sunday School almost 25 years ago, and smiled at this interfaith couple’s Christmas plays for children written for Old St Patrick’s Church over the past two decades. 

And in so many ways, my adult life echoed hers and built on the seeds she planted in my soul:  I taught high school English and Theater, yet left that for a few years to become the professional actor she hoped I would be, but then returned to teaching at an art high school to support my acting.  There I found that I could also guide high schoolers onto college and became a school counselor, encouraging others to take their flights like she did for me.  Last December, I took my two children and their significant others to meet her at home at St. Charles, a visit we will long hold in our hearts.  My daughter, Kelly Anna—yes, named after her—knowing that she would not have been born without my move to Chicago, asked, “What made you send my mother to Northwestern?”  Anna Marie replied, “I just saw something special in her.”  May we all find that person in our lives and never let them down.

So at this end of her earthly days, I not only replay the many funny and happy memories of her, but I also contemplate the word “contribution.”  Yes, we will make a financial one to Notre Dame in her name, as she has requested, but I believe that there is more contribution that she would want me to do in her honor: to teach and to leave something behind.  I recall that she would ask us in English class to look at the Latin roots of words.  So I reflected on “contribuere”—“to bring together, to add.”  What can I do—can we do—that will bring things, ideas, and people together, thus adding to a better life and building a better world?  What lessons did she leave behind with me, those lessons that I wish I could have passed on to that shy “Pat” back in 1968 or would today to any high school freshman?  Here are my modest thoughts:

First, find your voice.  Even when you think it has no power, no resonance, it is there. People actually do want to hear what you have to say.  And it really does have strength to move people toward change.  Listen to and for that still, small voice within you, for there you can find God, the ultimate source of creation and love.

Next, pay attention.  It is the meaning of first word of that Hebrew prayer that I said at my wedding—Sh’ma.  Listen!  Hear!  Pay attention!  Turn down all the noise and the distractions.  Look around you—no, really look around you, even if just for a while.  Do not be content with some quick surface glance, but take concerted time to dig deeper for the truths and gems that lie beneath.  

Reach out beyond yourself.  Staying alone and locked in a cave, like Elijah, is not the way to be a prophet, to make a contribution, to add something of meaning, or to bring people together.  Look about you: in your classes at NDA, at your peers, at neighbors, at family and friends, and seek companionship and community, for they are the oxygen for the soul.  But do not overlook your teachers or elders, and dismiss them as separate, beyond you, and somehow not worthy of your time, for they are.  They are neither invisible nor irrelevant.  They can shape your life.  Tap into their wisdom, for in that wealth you will learn how to grow.

Find community–at least one, but hopefully many— and then get engaged. Remain loyal to it.  Forge connections.  You will need these people to sustain you in bad times, to celebrate in good times, and mark your passage over the years.  Give back to those who are younger, and uphold those who journey before you and beside you.  That is what “church” at its essential roots is all about.

Become like Mary, a simple woman who simply said, “Yes,” and then in doing so give birth to something new, unknown and life changing in this world.  Get started now.  Your time is short.  Make this time on earth worth it and well-spent.

Lastly, tell your story, and listen well to other stories that come from all across this beautiful wide world.  Anna Marie Evans loved telling stories, in class, on the stage and in her life.  We all should love stories too.  They are the pearls of truths and keys into the human spirit. Stories also bring us together to listen and to share, and as such are the keys to the Kingdom on Earth.

Anna Marie Evans, you were one grand woman!  I will miss you, but you will never be far from my mind or my prayers.  May the memories of the righteous be a blessing.  Amen.

Sincerely,

Patty Rust Kovacs

 NDA Class of 1971