Loretto In Kansas City

Jackie Johnson

I am so sorry I missed out! It made me very sad. I have seen some pictures please post more.
Jackie Johnson

Connie Coyne Grady

WOW what a great time! Thank you Ron!

Connie Coyne Grady

Hey Guys I was able to upload a few pictures from the party on my profile from the party. Check them out!

Monique Hammond McDaniel

Ron & crew, well done my friend!!! I had a wonderful time. My face hurt from grinning all night. Thank God for the pics on name tags because I was having a difficult time ie. Jackie Matthes....come on who knows you as a brunette :-)

Hope to stay in touch with folks for sure. Ron calling you soon to do some lunch in Lawrence!
Monique

Ron Barrett

Monique!

It was Way beyond awesome to see you and everybody else. I hope to keep in much closer touch with everybody than... Once every 25 years! Come to Lawrence sometime! Lunch/dinner's on us, and campus tours are pretty cool.

Peace, Love!

-Ron

Mary Shortino

I hope all those posting photos will say where to find them (on personal profiles? flicker? something else?) I'd like to see all of them. Can't wait til 2012

Bill Groner

I am currently gathering all of the photos that have been/are being sent to me and posted on this site and they will be on the DVD that we will be sending out sometime late July or early August. Remember the DVD is only $15 for a lifelong keepsake and based on the photos so far it should be wonderful.

information about how to order is posted on the announcements part of the home page but here it is again.

Bill Groner 11706 Grant St. Overland Park, KS 66210 We will take orders up until July 15.

Thank you

Monica Liston Rutherford

Hey Billy,

I think the people who send in pics to you should get a cut, don't you?

Bill Groner

Hey Monica,

You have a point and Ron and I talked at lenghth about this. We felt that people would want this as a way to remember the event as a whole and not just their piece of it. We have recieved lots of photos which will require a lot of my time to put together but that is my contribution to the reunion. So far everyone is really excited about it.

It was great seeing Peter and Michael, sorry we missed seeing you.

Bill

Ron Barrett

Hey Monica,
Given that Billy will be investing quite a bit of time assembling these things, he's really performing a "community service" for us all. Call it Bill's labor of love! LOL! Mucho thanks are due to the old boy for taking this on.
I'm not sure how he would determine who gets what for a "cut" as it would only be appropriate to count the Net profit rather than Gross income. Because he's only charging $15 per, I suspect that once he accounts for his time, production costs, handling, shipping etc. this is a money looser... so a cut of a venture which loses money may not be such a good thing... financially ;-) Again, I think this is just the old boy flowing some good will to the rest of us... essentially pro bono. Still, look forward to the DVD as he'll have picts at much higher resolution than can be posted on the web... and he'll have all 350 of the shots from the disposable cameras, some of which are just a riot!


-Ron

Monica Liston Rutherford

Hey Ron,

I was really just being silly. I realize the impossibility of giving people cuts for their pictures, and I'm sure it will be a lot of work to put it all together.

By the way, Congratulations Bill! You should post a few pics of your new little one. Hope you get to go home soon.

Monica

Kate Greene

I am hoping to be out on a kayak, on the puget sound paddling with you all in spirit, from Olympia, WA. I cant wait to hear the stories and see some pics of the adventure with John Stanforth!
`kate greene

Bill Groner

Baby pictures coming soon. We wanted to get him out of nicu and into some clothes. He is doing great and should be home by Father's Day!

Monica Liston Rutherford

What a nice Father's day gift! :) Glad to hear he is doing well.

Bill Groner

A great Father's day indeed. Alex is doing great after a pit stop in the nicu. His lungs are at full steam ahead. Mom is recovering from c section and I am learning to value silence. Photos are coming shortly-as soon as I can figure out how to up load them.

Ron Barrett

Folks,
If you guys haven't seen this, the rats research John directed thirty years ago is now the stuff of Nobel prizes! Clearly, he and his work were much more special than any of us realized.

-Ron


http://www.livescience.com/health/090626-memory-image.html

Monica Liston Rutherford

Just a note to let anyone who was in "Guys and Dolls" know that I've posted a few pictures. Unfortunately, not everyone is in them, but I'll continue to search for more. You can find them in my profile.

Lance Hawk

anyone have pics from Our Town sometime between 76-80 lah0116@yahoo.com

Joshua Neff

Monica, thank you thank you thank you for posting those pictures from Guys & Dolls! It's one of my favorite Loretto productions (& is still one of my favorite musicals)!

Monica Liston Rutherford

Thank you Jeff. I'll post more if I can find them.

Pat Clothier (Teacher)

I hope many of you will be at the Memorial for Nelda. Alos,your pictures and also the reunion pictures are great!

Do any of you have memories of Loretto Camp &/or Deer Creek Camp stories you are willing to share with me? Hope so.

Lovingly, Pat Clothier

Alison (Alie) Scholes

I just spent an hour watching the DVD that Billy Groner put together. What fun! It had a lot more pictures than the slide show at the reunion, including current photos of everyone. Now I have to buy a few more for my siblings for their Christmas stockings! Thanks, Billy!

Joshua Neff

Pat, I'm so, so sorry about your house! I'm keeping you in my thoughts.

Ron Barrett

Jane Sweeney SL
October 28, 1918 – January 7, 2010

Mary Jane Sweeney was a native St. Louisan. In her autobiography of 1976, Jane wrote: “I first ‘saw the light of day ‘ in St. Louis on October 28, 1918. This was during World War I, and the very week I was born, was the height of the great flu epidemic! In the United States, more people died of the flu during that week than during any other time. After that, the epidemic gradually tapered off.”

“Two weeks after my birth was Armistice Day and the end of the war. My father was overseas in France with the American Expeditionary Forces when I was born and returned to the US several months later.”

Jane grew up in “the Roaring Twenties” in northwest St. Louis sometimes known as “New Kerry Patch” because of the large numbers of Irish who lived there.

A very great trial and an immense amount of pain hung over Jane’s teen years and radically affected her. As a freshman in high school, an ailment called “tic douloureux” began to grow worse, and she had to drop out of school without graduating. She wrote, “I was fortunate to have the services of a pioneer St. Louis neurological surgeon, Dr. Roland Klemme, who gave me effective relief by severing the nerves involved, and I was able to take up a normal life again. I was left with a total hearing loss in my right ear, and a slight partial paralysis of the right side of my face. I was 20 years old by this time.”

Jane completed a year’s training at a business school and accepted a civil service job as a secretary with the federal government in Washington, D.C. in November 1940. After several rapid promotions, she obtained a transfer back to the St. Louis area where she continued working through the World War II years.

In October 1945 entered Loretto taking the name Sister Leontine at reception. Her assigned “office” was clerical work in the registrar’s office of Loretto Junior College under the direction of Sister Francisca Engles who arranged for Jane to take a college entrance examination, which she passed. Then she was enrolled in the junior college without having to pick up the high school credits she had never completed.

After making her first vows in 1948, Jane was assigned to teach typing at Loretto Academy on Lafayette in St. Louis. For the next 20 years Jane taught business education classes in several schools from Alabama to Illinois. Like many other Sisters, Jane held several responsible jobs at the same time; she was appointed superior in Bernalillo and in 1964 and became Fourth Councilor and Secretary of the Southern Province.

In a section of her autobiography, Jane wrote: “The most interesting experience I have had occurred between 1971 and 1974 when I joined the Peace Corps and went to Ethiopia to teach business subjects, typing and shorthand, at the Tafari Makonnen Comprehensive Secondary School in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s bustling capital city…I wanted to give a few years in service to the people of a developing country, to try to help in some little way.”

Jane taught 28 classes a week with about 30 students in each class. Several afternoons a week, she walked from her home on the school grounds to the Empress Menen Orphanage where she helped by tutoring the older girls in English or holding recreational hours with story telling, informal dramatics and singing. In addition she assisted an orphaned high school student get through school by providing him money for food and living expenses.

Living overseas in a totally different culture brought both challenges and satisfactions. Jane learned to appreciate the fiery hot Ethiopian food and to master eating it with her fingers. She also learned to bargain for goods in the city’s open-air market, and to live in a “fishbowl” as the children cried out “foreigner, foreigner” when she passed by.

After returning from Ethiopia, Jane studied Library Science at Catherine Spalding College in Louisville, Kentucky and then accepted a position as librarian at Loretto in Kansas City, which she held until the summer 1979. Jane took on a one-year project to reorganize the library of St. Timothy Elementary School in Affton, Missouri.

When Jane returned to St. Louis, she lived at the Loretto Center in Webster Groves and worked as assistant librarian at Nerinx Hall High School from 1981 thru 1983. She then spent three years as a secretary in the office of the Provincial Treasurer of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet at their Province House in South St. Louis.

In 1987 Jane noted that she was librarian at the Loretto Center for Learning in St. Louis. She took care of two libraries: the textbooks in the upper floor library and the general student lending library on the lower floor. One afternoon a week, Jane took a group of children and taught them puppet making.

In the late 1980s into the 90s, Jane worked in the Business Office at the St. Louis Center and took on the role of bookkeeper. She retired in 2000.

Jane closed her autobiography with the following:
“Some of the groups whose principles I believe in and to which I belong are:
National Council of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
Amnesty International
Handgun Control
Oxfam America
Puppeteers of America

Sister Jane Sweeney took up residence in the Loretto Motherhouse Infirmary in August 2008. Her hearing and sight continued to diminish and she died on January 7, 2010 in the 64th year of religious life. Jane donated her body to science.

Jane, thank you for sharing your gifts with so many around the world. “We affirm that the greatest asset of the community is the life of every member.” You will be missed.

Carla Ladd Pryor

Hello to Class of 1980!

Does any one know where Peter Eklund is, or Sydney Faught, or Linda Gund?

Inquiring minds want to know.....Thanks! Carla Ladd-Pryor