Sister Garvey touches many lives

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

LEOMINSTER – Sister Margaret Garvey wasn’t going to miss her party – no matter what!
Sept. 13, her 100th birthday, she celebrated with her sisters, the Presentation Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at Presentation Convent.
The next day she had a birthday Mass there – celebrated by Bishop McManus and five priests, including a former student of hers and priests who serve or served at St. Leo Parish near the convent. After Mass the clergy, sisters, family and friends celebrated with her over dinner.
Dr. Mark Rollo, at the dinner with his wife, Annette, told The Catholic Free Press he met Sister Margaret about 10 years ago when he became her doctor.
“She was then, and is now, sharp as a tack,” he said. “She knows exactly what she wants. And I just say, ‘Yes, Sister.’” He said he’d just told her before the dinner, “You’ve been busy – in the hospital and rehab.”
“Yeah, they wanted to keep me three more days,” she told him. “And I said, ‘No, I’m going to leave for my celebration, and if you want me to come back for three days, I will.’”
Sister Margaret got out of the rehabilitation facility the day before her birthday, and didn’t go back, Presentation Sister Mary Anne Seliga, house administrator, told The Catholic Free Press. She said Sister Margaret talked about the celebration for days.
Sister Margaret doesn’t think only of herself.
“The last time I saw her she brought in a physician’s prayer, and it really touched me,” Dr. Rollo said. She’s “one of those patients who actually asks how you’re doing.”
“How many lives has she touched?” Sister Mary Anne asked in a welcome speech. “How much good has she done in 100 years?”
She’s still at it. Saying the grace before the meal, Sister Margaret asked blessings on the people gathered, the food, and those who provided and served it.
“We are able to have food today and some people do not, so we want to be aware of them,” she added.
“We have been beneficiaries of your light,” Father Dennis J. O’Brien, diocesan minister to priests, who met her years ago, told her, as he offered the toast. He said her parents did a wonderful job raising her and her siblings, and told of her hearing the call, “Who will keep the flame alive?” That was a reference to Venerable Nano Nagle, her congregation’s foundress.
Bishop McManus too spoke of Nano Nagle.
“What I found absolutely fascinating … she would carry a lantern to seek out” the sick, he said. He said a lantern is a powerful symbol for Catholic religious educators as they share the faith, which illuminates life’s journey.
“And I think, Sister Margaret, in your many years … your ministry has helped people to go from the shadows … into the light of truth. We thank you for holding high the lantern of faith.”
Bishop McManus said when they met in 1987 “I had to take one look at Sister Margaret Garvey and I knew I had met my match. Sister struck me as a woman on a mission.” He was 36, newly appointed vicar for education in the Diocese of Providence, he said. She’d been in religious life 50 years and was serving in the Providence diocese’s religious education office.
“And I was supposed to be in charge,” Bishop McManus quipped.
He said he believed that Sister Margaret’s life, from her first assignment in 1938 as a teacher at St. Bernard Elementary School in Fitchburg until her retirement in 1995 (“retirement,” he repeated, to laughter), was motivated by a desire to share her faith in Jesus.
Sister Margaret told The Catholic Free Press she entered the congregation in Fitchburg, where she taught in St. Bernard Elementary School, and later St. Bernard High School. She also served at Holy Rosary and St. John elementary schools in Clinton and an elementary school in Rhode Island, where she went to teachers’ college.
“Imagine having all this to remember!” she said, pausing in her verbal biography.
Sister Margaret said that at age 63 she said, “This is my last job.” So she interviewed for a position in the religious education office of the Diocese of Providence. There, she sometimes had to contact Bishop McManus, the vicar for education.
“By the time I got to be 75, I said (to Bishop McManus), ‘I’m going to retire,’” Sister Margaret said. “He said, ‘What?!’”
Sister Dorothy Scesny, also a Presentation Sister,  said, “What an inspiration and example she set for me as a young sister … an example of … a Presentation Sister and a woman of faith. Thank you, Margaret, for being who you are.”