Frankenstein native Sister Therese Thoenen notes 75th anniversary as a School Sister of St. Francis
Sister Therese Thoenen clearly remembers that foggy early morning of Aug. 22, 1947, when she boarded a train to Milwaukee to begin her life as a School Sister of St. Francis (SSSF).
She entered the convent at age 14, hoping to become a teacher, but her mother superiors had much bigger plans for her.
This farm girl from Frankenstein was destined for team-building and development, going from teacher/organist to education administrator and even leadership of the congregation’s United States Province.
It all started with her family.
“I was the second oldest of nine daughters of the late Peter and Josephine Thoenen and lived on a farm in Frankenstein,” Sr. Therese noted.
Our Lady Help of Christians Church and St. Mary School were the center of town and of life within it.
Family life on the Thoenen farm was built around Mass on Sunday, Perpetual Help Devotions on Tuesday, the family Rosary, and Stations of the Cross during Lent.
“Each summer, we would be expected to walk to Mass once during the week to pray for blessings on the crops — usually prayers for rain,” said Sr. Therese. “The question at night would be Mom calling up the stairs, ‘Did you all say your prayers?’”
Sr. Therese fondly describes her father’s comic timing and work ethic and her mother’s hospitality and gentleness.
Those are characteristics she inherited, and they have served her well.
Sr. Therese and her sisters all helped with all the work on the farm — “milking the cows, driving the team of mules, putting up hay in the barn loft and harvesting the grain.”
The family raised almost all the food that was needed, “so the summer was filled with canning and working in the garden,” she recalled.
On school days, the Thoenen girls walked about a mile through the three neighboring farms to get to the school bus stop.
“We loved the sisters in school, and we had a very good education,” said Sr. Therese.
Her mother always made sure the priest and sisters got the best of the strawberries, always the best from the garden and the best piece of meat at butchering time.
“But the absolute best part of it all was that we would receive beautiful holy cards from the sisters!” said Sr. Therese.
She and her siblings treasured those mementos and kept a strict count of how many each of them had.
Learning to teach
In time, Sr. Therese became aware of her calling to religious life.
She remembers going to the parish rectory to get a recommendation from her pastor, Father Lawrence Rost.
He asked what she would do in the convent.
“I think I could be a house sister,” she replied, referring to a sister who cooked and kept house in a convent for other sisters, who were usually educators.
The priest said, “No, I cannot write this.”
“I think I could be a first-grade teacher,” she told him.
Only then would he write her recommendation to enter the convent.
Soon, it was time to pack.
“I remember my mother trying to find a black suitcase because that is what the convent yellow slip said about the things one needed to have,” said Sr. Therese. “So, she bought the burgundy suitcase — the only kind the store had — and painted it black.”
Upon joining the community, Sr. Therese was given speech lessons to make her Missouri accent easier to understand.
Mother Corona, the mother superior in Milwaukee, asked what Sr. Therese would like to be in religious life.
Sr. Therese dutifully replied: “I would like to be a teacher.”
“Oh yes,” said Mother Corona. “And I see you had piano lessons, and we need teacher organists.”
So, with only three months of piano lessons under her belt, Sr. Therese began with a distinct purpose of taking organ lessons and becoming a teacher-organist.
“A good handshake”
Sr. Therese graduated from St. Joseph High School in Milwaukee and continued her studies at Alverno College at the SSSF motherhouse.
“During this time, it was an organized life of prayer, study, being on time, practicing the organ — and because I knew how to sew, I was appointed to work in the senior sewing room,” she said.
Many times, she washed, ironed and pleated Mother Corona’s habit.
“Yes, she did have that extra three-fourths English yards!” said Sr. Therese.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Alverno College and later completed a master’s degree in religious education at Loyola University in Chicago, as well as a professional certificate in spiritual gerontology.
Her teaching ministry began in the primary grades and later moved to junior high.
“After one year at St. John in Racine, Wisconsin, I was sent to St. Albert School in Milwaukee, a brand new school, teaching second grade, and all coming from a public grade school,” she recalled.
The pastor was an exceptionally good and holy man and well-liked by Mother Corona.
“I was told to do whatever he asked — even play “Yankee Doodle” if he asked,” said Sr. Therese.
She fondly remembers the homemaker sister, Sister Antoine Mueller, “who always encouraged me that I was doing a good job.”
“Once she gave me a medicine bottle of M&Ms as my first pills to take when I felt discouraged,” said Sr. Therese. “She gifted me with self-confidence.”
The SSSF congregation established geographical provinces in 1963. Sr. Therese moved into the newly established Rockford Province and to St. Walter School in Roselle, Illinois.
Two years later, Mother Calestine appointed her principal with the words: “Sister, you are tall and have a good handshake! You will do just fine as a principal!”
“I used the handshake as a good indicator many times when hiring staff,” Sr. Therese recalled.
Early in her tenure, the pastor, “a very quiet and good man,” visited the school office, sat down, and said, “Sister, you run the school, and I will run the parish, and when we need to talk, we will.”
“That was the beginning of the making of a great and well-known, first-rate school in the Joliet diocese!” said Sr. Therese.
Drawn into leadership
She led schools for the next 30 years — first at St. Walter School, then at St. Philip the Apostle School in Addison.
She served on various educational and parish committees and boards in the Joliet diocese, and was an organist and director of the parish choir.
During that time, parish school advisory boards were forming, and sisters were being sent out in great numbers to teach. Sr. Therese became chair of the Catholic Diocesan Principals of DuPage County, Illinois, and started the Breakfast Club for principals.
She was also asked to be the spiritual guide for St. Walter Parish’s Catholic Women’s Group.
“The parish and school was alive and well with Marriage Encounters, Cursillo groups and good Liturgies,” she recalled.
An important turning point came during a Rockford Provincial Assembly, when Sister Joelyn Hayes looked at her and said, “Sr. Therese, I would like to hear what you think.”
“I will always be grateful to her, for she gave me my voice in community,” said Sr. Therese.
From 1995-2003, Sr. Therese served on the Provincial Leadership Team for the SSSF United States Province in Milwaukee, first as a team member and then as provincial.
She remembers feeling concerned but then surrendering to “what will be, will be!”
“Those were incredibly special and blessed eight years,” she said. “I will always be grateful for those years as well as my eight years as Personal Service Director for our sisters at Sacred Heart.”
Sr. Therese holds other grateful memories.
“I remember Sister Cathy Ryan asking me to work on the 2010 Future Planning Committee,” she said. “That invite brought me into the larger community! These personal invites help me to grow.”
From 2003-11, Sr. Therese served as director for the Sacred Heart Convent Nursing Home in Milwaukee.
In 2011, Sister Carol Rigali SSSF invited her to assist the secretaries in the Provincial office and later to be liaison to the Associate Relationship Team.
“And now I also enjoy my ministry as sacristan at Sacred Heart, our retirement home,” she said.
“Love and gratitude”
Sr. Therese laughs as she recalls that in the 1960s, when sisters were changing out of their habits, she rushed to Kmart, having been away from dress-shopping since the 1940s, only to purchase what she now realizes were unflattering styles.
She is grateful to her parents who taught her to pray, worship God, love the Church, work hard and do her fair share.
“These values serve well in religious life,” she said.
Founded in 1874, the School Sisters of St. Francis (SSSF) is an international community of Catholic sisters who unite with others to build a just and peaceful world.
The sisters and associates work to address the needs of those who are poor and marginalized by society.
The SSSF mission is thriving, with five provinces serving the United States, Europe, Latin America, India and Tanzania.
“I stand with a heart full of love and gratitude for my parents and family, for the sisters I have lived with in community, and for all I have been called to do and all I have received from the community of the School Sisters of St. Francis!” said Sr. Therese.
