Magdalene and her twin brother Paul were born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 7, 1922 to Paul Joseph and Magdalene Eva (Welsh). They were six in a family of four boys and two girls; the brother nearest them in age was ten years older.

At the time of Sister Dolorita’s death, Paul, her twin brother, reminisced with us about their childhood, chuckling about their pranks. One day the two of them were parading up and down the sidewalk in front of their house with their mother’s only potted plant, and they dropped it. They were momentarily “in hot water” together. Of course, they were in the same grade school, Sts. Peter and Paul in St. Louis. The girls were on one side of the street and the boys on the other. They enjoyed a healthy competition when it came to their scholastic achievements. The children would tease Paul, telling him that his sister’s average was higher than his own. The next month, he would surge ahead of her.

“On Sunday afternoon she was always going down to Church. So I was not surprised that she went to the convent,” relates Paul. Before she entered at the age of twenty-one in 1943, she was a licensed beautician. Magdalene heard about Clyde through our magazine, Tabernacle and Purgatory, which she found on the rack at her parish church. She felt called to perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Magdalene was professed in 1945 and received the name of Dolorita. She had started as a postulant in the sewing department, and then as the years went on, she helped several procurators, eventually becoming procurator herself. In her job as procurator, she always knew how to find what was wanted, and she did this with a cheerful countenance. She made the coifs and collariums for some years, and she was also in charge of plumbing and laundry.

Sister Dolorita was in charge of the floor maintenance and housekeeping at Clyde for over forty years. From the beginning, she took seriously the admonition from Mother Mary Dolorosa when Mother assigned this work to her: “always be good to the sisters.” Dolorita was stationed at Clyde nearly all her life, except for one year at Mundelein, until she needed to come to the health care center in St. Louis.

Her only request of the community at the time of her jubilee was that the sick sisters in the infirmary be allowed to attend. There were seven wheelchairs in the middle aisle. In her own words, “Fr. Lucien gave the sermon and I can’t just pass this over. If anyone knows me well enough, I’m much too shy for all this fanfare. After the services, the sisters took the wheelchairs out the front and it just happens I have the first stall. As they came out, they all nodded to me. I returned the gesture as if I was an Abbess. I really felt like a little queen.” In thanking the community for all they did for her jubilee, she wrote, “My response to them will be a loving cheerful concern for all their needs and together we will build a community of love and joy.”

“She is always so cheerful!”is how our Sister Dolorita could best be described. When asked what she would always remember, she responded, “The year 1961, when we renovated the infirmary wing at Clyde, the very best year of my life. I suppose doing it for our sick sisters was a real joy. Everyone worked together so beautifully.” Sister Dolorita enjoyed classical music, reading, and walking. She was known for her skill in baking and cake decoration, and the sisters enjoyed the fruits of her labor for many years.

Sister Dolorita was hospitalized a week before Easter with aplastic anemia, which was to take her life. Sr. Lucia Anne, who had grown fond of her during English classes, asked Dolorita to ask God for the favor of knowing when she would die so that she could be with her. This favor was granted, and Sr. Lucia Anne was watching and praying at Dolorita’s bedside at 7:15 pm on May 11, 2000, when she passed to her eternal reward.

The Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated in the St. Louis monastery chapel on Saturday, May 12, with burial in Mt. Calvary Cemetery at our Clyde monastery on May 15, 2000.