Sister Anne Liam Lees, OP 1932-2021 - Adrian Dominican ...

Sister Anne Liam Lees, OP
                             1932-2021
                             Anne lived and shared life with the poor and needy in many
                             cultures. She brought to life the words of Scripture: God is near to
                             the brokenhearted and God hears the cry of the poor.

                             Sister Peggy Coyne, Adrian Crossroads Mission Chapter Prioress,
                             concluded her eulogy for Sister Anne Liam Lees with these words,
                             describing a woman who had spent much of her life in ministry in places
                             such as inner-city Detroit, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the
                             Dominican Republic.

Sister Anne Liam was born January 23, 1932, in Decatur, Illinois, and baptized Margaret Frances.
She was the second of six children born to William and Anne (Hines) Lees, along with Mary Anne,
Robert, Paul, Michael, and Richard.

William was a proud son of Wisconsin, with a great love for fishing and ice-skating and other winter
sports. While the family lived in Decatur, he delivered Hostess Cake products and milk in a horse-
drawn wagon, often singing made-up songs as he drove. Anne, an Illinois native, was trained as a
beautician and for many years operated a beauty shop in the family home.

“Her quiet but determined personality was the strong force in our family life. It was outshone only by
her deep love for us, her children, and later for all her 16 grandchildren and great-grandchildren,”
Sister Anne Liam wrote in her autobiography, adding that her mother’s awareness of the needs of the
less fortunate would lead the family, after picnics at a local park, to slip their leftover sandwiches into
the belongings of the indigent men who slept on the benches.

The three older children – Mary Anne, Margaret, and Robert – were close in age and therefore
especially close as siblings. They all attended St. Patrick’s School, where they were taught by the
Ursuline Sisters. The school was on the other side of town, necessitating a long walk unless their
father came to get them in his Hostess Cake vehicle or when in bad weather they could take a city
bus.

1945 was a year of both change and sorrow for young Margaret. William decided to go into the dry-
cleaning business with a brother-in-law and the family moved to Pana, Illinois. Then in May of that
year, Mary Anne died of pneumonia. “I had always had my sister to forge the way,” Sister Anne Liam
wrote. “I cried bitter tears for her loss, my school friends, and all things familiar.”

High school brought a wealth of new experiences. Margaret enjoyed sports and her friends, and in
her senior year was nominated for Homecoming Queen. As graduation neared, wanting to attend a
Catholic college, she found out about Siena Heights College (now University) when an aunt sent her
some information from a Passionist magazine, and in the fall of 1949 her mother drove her to Adrian.

As time went on – and especially after serving as a counselor at the Congregation-run camp at
Kelleys Island, Ohio, for the summer of 1950 – she decided she wanted to enter the Congregation. “I
had to break the news to my parents and they received it well,” she wrote. “It was more difficult to
explain the decision to my boyfriend of several years.”

She became a postulant in February 1951 and a novice that August, receiving her religious name in
honor of her parents. After her canonical novitiate year was completed she was sent to teach at

Resurrection School in Lansing, Michigan, spending two years there before being sent to St. Theresa
School in Detroit, where she taught from 1954 to 1959. During that time, in 1955, she completed her
bachelor’s degree in history at Siena Heights, followed in 1960 by a master’s degree in American
history from The Catholic University of America.

Her appointment card in August 1959 held a considerable surprise: she was being missioned to
Aquinas College in Nassau, the Bahamas. She was on a home visit at the time, and she and her
family had to consult a map to find out where the Bahamas even was.

She was in the Bahamas until 1966, the first several years at Aquinas College and then as
headmistress at St. Thomas More, the nearby grade school. Following local custom, the Sisters
visited the children’s homes regularly, and seeing first-hand how the families lived was an eye-
opening experience. “Their simplicity of life, expression of faith, and acceptance of us are among my
most treasured memories,” she wrote. “My love for them, the beauty of their islands and the warm
waters of the Caribbean brought new inspiration to my spiritual/prayer life.”

Her next assignment after the sunny Bahamas was back in Adrian at St. Joseph Academy, where she
spent a year (1966-1967) before being sent to the now-combined St. Theresa-Visitation School in
Detroit. She was there until 1970, and had the experience of both the aftermath of the July 1967
Detroit riots and the tensions following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968.
After the riots, “morale was low and feelings high,” and Dr. King’s assassination “was another blow to
the Black community,” she wrote. “National Guard troops surrounded our school that afternoon.” And
yet, “[t]he presence of God, in those years, was obvious in the faith and hope of the people who lived
in the midst of chaos and uncertainty.”

In 1970, Sister Jean Kevin Aufderheide invited her to teach seventh- and eighth-grade language arts
at Academia Sagrado Corazon in Santurce, Puerto Rico. The prospect excited her, but within a
couple of years she realized that in order to be more connected with the people, as she had been in
Nassau, she needed to improve her Spanish, and she eventually went to live with the Spanish
Dominican Missionary Sisters and commuted back and forth to the Academia.

In 1974, she and Sisters Ivelisse Auffant and Patricia Harvat began a ministry in the campos near
Trujillo Alto, teaching at the Academia in the mornings and going to the campos in the late afternoons
to engage in a range of pastoral ministries. As Sister Patricia recalled in her homily for Sister Anne
Liam,

      The lives of the poor and most vulnerable claimed Anne’s faithfulness. This is where
      she came to know Christ Jesus and everything else was regarded as nothing because
      there was her treasure. … The vows Anne professed at her silver jubilee in a small
      campo chapel filled with the lives of men, women and children she had served enabled
      her to live her call to this life with humble faith, dynamic hope and a love without
      boundaries.

These were the years when the “option for the poor” became an important issue, and she and other
Sisters, both Adrian Dominican and from other congregations, took part in summertime immersion
experiences in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. A visit to Haiti with Sister Patricia Harvat led
to the decision in 1984 to minister to the Haitian people, and she and several other Sisters went to the
Dominican Republic to minister in the bateyes (work camps) where Haitian sugar cane cutters lived.
Their work there included providing meals for elderly residents who could no longer work and
ensuring people could get medical care.

Sister Anne Liam returned to the United States in 2003 and spent three years ministering at Camillus
House, a center serving the poor and homeless in Miami. Then, in 2006, she was elected Chapter
Prioress of the Florida Mission Chapter. Sister Cathy Olds, who served as Chapter Prioress of the
Dominican West Chapter at the same time, said in her remembrance after Sister Anne Liam’s
passing:

      She taught me that there was more to life than being engrossed in details and
      organization all the time – to her, “people” were the focus and most important. Thus, we
      balanced each other during our leadership time together: my working on Anne Liam
      being on the right topic and document page during Leadership meetings and Anne Liam
      teaching me to hang loose. We have remained friends ever since.

Sister Grace Henneberry, Sister Anne Liam’s administrative assistant during the final year of her
tenure, added this:

      I learned so much from her open, non-judgmental heart, her humility and graciousness
      in dealing with others and her deep love for our Adrian Dominican Congregation.

      … Sister Anne Liam, a “people person,” possessed deep inner peace and truly lived in
      God’s Presence. She delighted in being with others, whether going for walks, playing
      cards in the evening or discussing the twists and turns of everyday life. Others quickly
      sensed her “consecrated availability” and freely shared their joys and challenges with
      her.

Sister Anne Liam returned to Adrian to live in 2012, when her term as Chapter Prioress was up. She
died unexpectedly at the Charles and Virginia Hickman Hospital in Adrian on January 17, 2021, aged
eighty-eight and in her sixty-ninth year of religious profession.

After her passing, memories poured in from nieces and nephews, Dominican Life Center receptionist
Emily Schoeneweis, and many of the Adrian Dominican Sisters with whom Sister Anne Liam had
shared ministry and life. All of them recalled Sister’s zest for life, her compassion for the poor, her
deep presence for her family and friends, and the way she taught them how to live their own lives.

“Anne, you are our extraordinary grace,” said Sister Patricia Harvat near the conclusion of her homily
at Sister Anne Liam’s funeral. “We can do no less than to be that blessing and grace, to love with a
heart without boundaries.”

Right: Members of the Lees family are: back row, from left, Richard, Michael, Sister Anne Liam, Robert, and Paul,
                                and seated in front, William and Anne, parents.

  Left: Some of the Lees siblings are, from left, Mary Anne, Bobby, and Margaret, the future Sister Anne Liam.

Left: Sisters Anne Liam Lees, left, and Helen Faiver in Guaymate, the Dominican Republic. Right: Sisters Nery Sori,
                              Anne Liam Lees, Eneida Santigo, and Basilia De la Cruz.

  Left: Members of the 2011 Diamond Jubilee Class are: back row, from left, Sisters Attracta Kelly (Prioress), Julianne
    Wolny, Jeannine Holway, Anne Liam Lees, Judith Ann Lieder, and Agnes Peplinski; middle row, from left, Sisters
Elizabeth Lynch, Rita Brunett, Thérèse M. Haggerty, Mary Daria Herbella, Catherine Ahern, and Elisa Joan Doherty; and
  front row, from left, Sisters Dolores Marie Dolan, Dolores Slosar, Nancy Hanna, Celine Marie Regan, Marian Edward
                                             Guethlein, and Clara Ann Budenz.

Members of the New Hope Mission Group, circa 2013, are, standing from left, Associate Peggy Wilds and Sisters Lorraine
Sinn, Jean Tobin, Diane Pitera, Anne Liam Lees, Sandra Exley, Dorothy Booms, and Laura Pautz, and seated, from left,
                               Sisters Edith Kathleen Zemke and Mary Kathleen O’Neill.

Left: Holy Saturday, March 13, 2013. Right: Members of the Adrian Dominican Sisters Leadership Council are: standing,
from left, Sisters Frances Nadolny, Chapter Prioress, Great Lakes Dominican; Tarianne DeYonker and Corinne Sanders,
General Councilors; Judith Benkert, Chapter Prioress, Dominican West; Attracta Kelly, Prioress; Mary Ellen Youngblood,
    Chapter Prioress, Adrian Crossroads; Rose Celeste O’Connell, Congregation Secretary; Anne Liam Lees, Chapter
 Prioress, Florida; and Kathleen Schanz, General Councilor. Seated from left are Sisters Mary Priniski, Chapter Prioress,
 Mid-Atlantic; Patricia Dulka, Chapter Prioress, Dominican Midwest; Josephine Gaugier, Chapter Prioress, Holy Rosary;
                                            and Julie Hyer, General Councilor.