UPDATED: MCC honors Loretta Broker with Citizen Recognition Award
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One of the most important lessons Loretta Broker learned in college was to be an advocate.
“The Benedictine nuns at Mount Saint Scholastica taught us to be women of conviction, to stand up for what is right,” said Mrs. Broker, a member of St. Michael Parish in Russellville.
Her acting upon that conviction for over 60 years has made Mrs. Broker a wise choice for the Missouri Catholic Conference’s (MCC) 2026 Citizen Recognition Award for the Jefferson City diocese.
The MCC (mocatholic.org), public-policy agency of the state’s four Roman Catholic dioceses, bestows the award each year on an individual in each diocese who exemplifies Catholic values through faithful service, civic responsibility and commitment to the common good.
Bishop Ralph B. O’Donnell presented the award to Mrs. Broker on Sept. 30.
“Please accept this with the gratitude of the Missouri Catholic Conference and the bishops of Missouri,” he said. “We’re grateful to you. Thank you. Thank you so much!”
“I don’t know how to describe what I’m feeling,” said Mrs. Broker. “I think I’m embarrassed to death, because I know of so many other people who deserve this more than I do.”
Bishop O’Donnell lauded Mrs. Broker’s work to uphold the sanctity and dignity of all human life, from conception to natural death.
“Thank you for your witness!” he told her. “And of course, it’s ongoing.”
Mrs. Broker’s faith is rooted in the relationships she has built with the families in her community.
Asked to define Catholic citizenship, she stated: “You have to speak up for the Church and everybody in it. You have to be a voice for the people who don’t have a voice.”
For example, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton decisions in 1973, legalizing abortion-on-demand in all 50 states, she set out to inform the faithful of what it all meant.
“I went to Missouri Right to Life and picked up all kinds of materials,” she recalled. “Then, I went around to all the churches in the area to put stuff on windshields. I did that for many years.”
“I’m praying big-time for Amendment 3 to pass and for us to abolish the death penalty,” she told Bishop O’Donnell.
With her late husband, Michael Jr., Mrs. Broker played a key role in helping to reestablish the Russellville parish in 1984.
“We went to the bishop and said, ‘We’ll do everything that needs to be done,’” she recalled. “‘Please just give us your permission and allow a priest to offer Mass with us.’”
The people then moved everything they could from their dilapidated old church to the parish hall.
Bishop Michael F. McAuliffe (+1969-1997) came to offer the first Mass.
Thereafter, “every Saturday night,” said Mrs. Broker, “a few of us took trucks over to St. Martins, loaded up their folding chairs, brought them to St. Michael’s and set them up in the hall. Then, when Mass was over, everybody picked up their chairs, put them back on the trucks to send back over there.”
The Russellville parish eventually bought its own chairs and then built a new church in 2002.
“Omnes semitae”
Having taken part in nearly every liturgical and advisory role in her parish, Mrs. Broker passionately ensures that homebound parishioners receive the Sacraments, and regularly checks on anyone who is absent from Mass.
“Loretta looks for everyday opportunities to evangelize,” the person who nominated her for the award stated. “Parishioners describe her as passionate, welcoming and always willing to try new ideas to strengthen the community.”
“Although she is known for speaking her mind, she does so with kindness and genuine concern for others,” the nominator continued. “Her devotion to the Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin Mary is evident in both her words and her actions.”
Mrs. Broker, whose maiden name was Gueguen, grew up in Lexington, Missouri.
She got her faith through her family, but she found her voice with her classmates at Mount St. Scholastica, an all-girls Catholic college in Atchison, Kansas.
“We were advocates — some would say ‘rabble-rousers,’” she recalled. “We spoke up. We tried to overturn things that we saw happening that were just plain wrong.”
The sisters were delighted with their students’ activism.
“They were so proud of us!” said Mrs. Broker. “Above all else, they taught us to be faithful.”
Mrs. Broker was home one summer when Mr. Broker arrived in Lexington as a newly minted teacher.
A fellow educator, highly regarded as the town matchmaker, went out of her way to help them get to know each other.
“I’m fond of telling people that he took me to a prison on our first date,” said Mrs. Broker.
Namely, he asked her to accompany him to meet his family in Frankenstein and to stop off in Jefferson City to touch base with the warden of the old Missouri State Penitentiary, whose son had been one of his students.
“I was a sociology major and was studying juvenile delinquency and criminology,” Mrs. Broker recalled. “So, I went up there with him.”
From there, they went to visit his parents.
“I absolutely fell in love with them,” she said. “They were precious.”
On the way home, the couple talked about what they were both looking for in a spouse.
“Because in those days, you didn’t wait around to get married,” she noted. “You got married!”
They did so on Aug. 22, 1964.
Their 60-year union brought them seven children, 15 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
“It was meant to be!” said Mrs. Broker. “It was wonderful.”
If you knew Suzy-Q
After having their first five children in five years, they served as foster parents to three newborn babies through Catholic Charities of Kansas City.
One of the babies they took care of was later adopted by a family in Russellville, a town the Brokers had never heard of.
“Lo and behold, so many years later when we reopened St. Michael, in attendance was their family with our former foster child,” said Mrs. Broker. “We became wonderful friends and watched her grow up and have a child of her own. Talk about coincidence and providence!”
The Brokers took a break from fostering babies when Mrs. Broker became pregnant with their sixth child.
Mr. Broker eventually accepted a position with the Missouri Public Service Commission in Jefferson City.
The family settled in 1977 on a 106-acre family farm near Lohman, off a road named for St. Michael, and became members of St. Martin Parish in St. Martins until St. Michael Parish reopened in 1984.
Mrs. Broker served in various capacities at St. Martin Parish, including Parish Pastoral Council president and many offices for the PTO, and taught PSR.
The couple’s two youngest children attended all eight grades at St. Martin School.
Mrs. Broker gardened, canned and preserved food and ran the household full-time before their youngest went away to college.
She volunteered at the Samaritan Center interfaith outreach to people in need in Jefferson City, Meals on Wheels in Russellville and the food pantry at that city’s Trinity Lutheran Church.
She taught religious education classes at St. Martin Parish and became the head of the St. Michael Parish School of Religion when the Russellville parish reopened.
She served for several years as a deanery representative on the Diocesan Pastoral Council.
She and Mr. Broker volunteered with Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts and 4-H while their children were growing up.
“All of us had entries in many categories at the Cole County Fair,” Mrs. Broker noted.
She worked part-time for seven years in Gov. John Ashcroft’s office, then served for a decade as activity director at a local nursing home.
“My job was to make a difference in the lives of the people who lived there,” she said, “in their psychological, social, physical and spiritual lives.”
The first of Mr. Broker’s heart attacks prompted Mrs. Broker to stay closer to home.
She decided to become a fool for Christ.
“I couldn’t just stay home all the time,” she said. “So, I decided to be Suzy-Q the Clown.”
Sporting a prominent orange wig, a brightly colored dress, sunflowers and big yellow shoes, she made the rounds at several local nursing homes.
“We’d sing old songs together,” she recounted. “‘If You Knew Susie (Like I Know Susie),’ ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ and ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’ — songs like that.”
She also started reading to students at Russellville Elementary School, then at St. Martin School in St. Martins.
“I always had a hat to match the book,” she said. “I loved doing voices for each of the characters.”
When COVID-19 hit, she switched to a recording booth at the Wolfner Talking Book and Braille Library in Jefferson City, where she gave voice to nonfiction and children’s books for people who are visually impaired.
Mr. Broker died after a long illness in 2024.
“Forty years of heart trouble, and it wasn’t his heart that took him,” said Mrs. Broker. “It was cancer.”
Borrowed ideas
This year’s MCC Citizen Recognition Award recipient and fellow members of Mount St. Scholastica’s Class of 1964 remain close, with a monthly newsletter being sent to 43 alumnae. Their classmates included Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Mathai of Kenya (1940-2011).
Mrs. Broker enjoys being part of an active and outward-focused parish.
“We have such a wonderful reputation here,” she said. “I remember when Mike was in the hospital in Columbia, the chaplain came in and said, ‘I’ve heard of St. Michael’s. I’ve heard of how welcoming you all are.’”
Mrs. Broker borrowed an idea from a neighboring congregation to make little bags of books and quiet toys to help young children stay occupied during Mass.
“I made the bags out of leftover material from things I had sewn, like bathrobes and pajamas and things for my grandkids,” she said. “They hang the bags in the back of church.”
When Mr. Broker was diagnosed with cancer, people from St. George Parish in Linn sent him cards to let him know that “our prayer warriors are praying for you.”
“I thought, ‘What a wonderful idea!’” Mrs. Broker recalled. “So, we started that at St. Michael, and now we’ve got a ton of people we pray for.”
Mrs. Broker sends cards to remind people on the prayer list that intentional intercession is under way on their behalf.
“We’re powerful prayer warriors,” she said. “As soon as someone goes into the hospital, they tell us, and we remember to pray for them.”
“Let there be peace”
Mrs. Broker is not a passive consumer of news.
After reading the local daily, she often prays and then writes polite but direct (and sometimes devastating) letters to the editor, each through the lens of faith and ethics.
Her topics have ranged from war and war-mongering, wasted taxpayer money, polarization and division, negativity, incivility and global injustices, to mistreatment of immigrants and systematic disregard for unborn human life.
“Lord, please forgive our inhumanity to man!” she once wrote.
On another occasion, she began with the Prayer of St. Francis, asking God to make her an instrument of his peace.
“My hope and prayer is that all Americans who vote, judge their candidates on this message,” she continued. “‘Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.’
“We do not need to spread hate but love, for hate will only continue to divide our nation,” she wrote. “‘They will know we are Christians by our love.’ ‘God bless America!’”
While doing genealogy research, she found a letter her mother had published in a newspaper in the 1940s or ’50s, and plentiful correspondence from her sister to the Kansas City Star.
Mrs. Broker abides by a dictum her mother handed down her: “You don’t have to like everybody, but you do have to love them.”
She remains convinced that after each individual, each circle of friends and each parish does whatever they can to put their faith into practice and encourage others to do likewise, “we put it all in God’s hands.”
“We tell him, ‘I do this for you. Make me your hands on this earth. The work I’m doing is yours,’” she said.
