Sister Barbara Hubbard, OP 1930-2018 - Adrian Dominican Sisters
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Sister Barbara Hubbard, OP
1930-2018
Although she had been educated by Adrian Dominicans
throughout 12 years of schooling at St. Mary’s in Royal Oak,
Michigan, it took a chance visit to Adrian for Barbara Hubbard
to realize her call to religious life.
During Barbara’s senior year, she was invited to a fashion
show at Siena Heights College (now University), and prior to
the event was introduced to Sister Mary Edmund Harrison, the
Mistress of Novices. As it turned out, Barbara never went over
to the show; when her companions headed over to the
college, she stayed behind, deep in conversation with Sister Edmund, and by the time the
others returned to collect her for the drive home, she had decided to enter the
Congregation.
“The dialogue Sister [Edmund] and I had resulted in a revelation to me of the life I would
choose,” she wrote decades later in an autobiography she titled A Spiritual Narrative:
Breakthrough Events in My Life. “The feelings and ‘knowing’ her words evoked connected
in me.” And so, she left Adrian that day bearing Mother Gerald Barry’s approval and an
application for admission.
Barbara Joan Hubbard was born October 9, 1930, in Royal Oak to Margaret Alice (Graffy)
and Joseph Hubbard. Margaret emigrated from her native England to Toronto, Canada,
with her family when she was a teenager, and she and her sister came as young women to
Detroit to work. It was there that she met and married Joseph, a Colorado native who had
moved to Michigan. Four years after Barbara was born, her sister, Elizabeth Catherine,
came into the family.
The same evening that Barbara returned home from that fateful trip to Adrian in June
1948, she told her parents of her unexpected desire to become an Adrian Dominican as
soon as she graduated. “They were surprised at the suddenness of this decision and
advised me to wait until the fall to test my feelings and decision,” she wrote.
She agreed to do so. Then, that September 7, her father died suddenly, and she realized
she needed to put her dream on hold. She went to work as a typist for the Michigan Bell
Telephone Company and stayed home with her mother and sister for a year and a half
before entering the Congregation on February 2, 1950. When she became a novice that
August 8, she received the religious name Sister Alice Josepha, in honor of her parents.
After first profession in August 1951, she was sent to teach at St. Joseph School in Sault
Ste. Marie, Michigan, where she stayed for ten years. During this time, she earned her
bachelor’s degree in English from Siena Heights College. In 1961, she was missioned to
Sacred Heart School, Munising, Michigan, as principal, teacher, and superior of the
convent. She stayed there until 1967, earning her master’s degree in English from the
University of Detroit in 1966.
1
Six years as a high school teacher at the Congregation-sponsored Mount St. Mary
Academy in St. Charles, Illinois, followed. In 1971, the General Council made the decision
to close the Academy, and the doors shut for the last time at the end of the 1971-72 school
year.
Needing a new teaching job, Sister Barbara came to Adrian for a weekend of recruiting
presentations by high school principals. And, in an echo of that long-ago fateful trip to the
Motherhouse late in her senior year of high school, this visit held its own surprise.
She happened upon an evening slide-show presentation by a Marist brother who was the
headmaster of the Mtendere School for boys in Malawi, and quickly found herself drawn to
consider the possibility of going there. The next day, after an ice storm had frozen the
engine of their car, she and her companion had to wait several hours for it to thaw out
before they could depart for Illinois, and during the delay Sister Barbara “wandered into”
the office of the Sister who had invited the headmaster to come make his presentation.
Finding materials about Malawi in the office, Sister Barbara began perusing them, and
when the Sister herself arrived they began what became several months of dialogue.
The result was that Sister Barbara, along with Sisters Carol Jean McDonnell, Patricia
Garbacz, and Helen Dillon, became the first Adrian Dominican Sisters to work in Africa.
They went to Malawi in August 1972, and Sister Barbara – who called that ministry “one of
the most evolutionary experiences of my life” – stayed until 1976, when she returned to the
United States.
But Africa beckoned again, and in 1977, Sister Barbara volunteered for ministry in Zambia,
this time to staff the St. Mary Leadership Center, a leadership training school for
postulants.
This experience turned out very differently from her time in Malawi, however. Zambia’s
poor economy, the presence of rebels nearby, and various issues involving the school,
Church authorities, and the students led to Sister Barbara and her companion both
deciding to leave the country after less than a year and a half.
A few months later, she was asked to complete the school year at Notre Dame High
School in Belmont, California, when a teacher there died suddenly. During this time, she
sought spiritual direction from a Jesuit priest at the Jesuit Retreat Center in nearby Los
Altos, and when he challenged her to follow her dream of becoming a spiritual director, she
became a staff member at the center and completed the necessary coursework.
Her three years there were happy and fulfilling ones, but in 1982 her mother’s cognitive
decline led Sister Barbara to decide she needed to live with her mother at her home in
Troy, Michigan. She cared for her mother until the last two months of Margaret’s life, at
which point nursing-home care finally was a must, and worked as a pastoral minister at St.
Anastasia’s in Troy. As part of her ministry there, she trained more than 1,000 volunteers
to visit the sick of the parish and a group of 50 people to take Communion to homebound
parish members and the hospitalized.
2
The more than 12 years she spent with her mother allowed the two of them much valuable
time together, “healing the strain of our relationship in earlier years when my entrance into
religious life left her angry, hurt and resentful,” she wrote.
In November 1994, shortly before her mother died, Sister Barbara received a call from
Sister Betty Condon that led her to her final ministry. Sister Betty had shared her vision for
a retreat house with her Chapter Prioress, Sister Kathryn Cliatt, who wanted Sisters Betty
and Barbara to connect.
The result was the Sea of Peace House of Prayer at Edisto Island, South Carolina, named
for a line from Catherine of Siena’s Dialogues. The ecumenical retreat center operated
until 2012, by which time both Sisters Barbara and Betty had retired (in 2006) and returned
to Adrian, passing the directorship of the facility on to another Adrian Dominican, Sister
Sharon Culhane.
Sister Barbara died at the Dominican Life Center on May 18, 2018, after suffering from
dementia and speech aphasia for a number of years that rendered her unable to
communicate verbally. She was remembered by Sister Nadine Sheehan, Vicaress of the
Adrian Dominican Vicariate, at the Vigil service on May 22 as “a kind, prayerful, spiritual
and adventurous woman.”
“Words that were shared this afternoon by the Sisters who knew or lived with her are
gentle, concerned, kind, welcoming, true person, quiet, loving, prayerful, spiritual, a joy to
live with, to name a few,” Sister Nadine continued. After telling the assembly about Sister
Barbara’s life and ministry, she concluded with these words:
The deep spirituality of Barbara is difficult to capture in this short review of
her life. Her dependence on her God leading her throughout her life is so
evident in her description of moving from one phase of her life to the next
and her joy in helping others find God in their life. She was so grateful for
God’s call to become a spiritual director. We know that she is experiencing a
greater joy now in the company of her God! Thank you, Barbara, for your
example.
Sister Maria Goretti Browne preached the homily for the next day’s funeral Mass, relating
Sister Barbara’s life to the day’s Gospel reading from Matthew – the story of the five wise
virgins who came to the wedding prepared with oil for their lamps and the five foolish ones
who did not.
Like the five wise virgins, when Sister Barbara realized she was beginning to suffer from
memory loss as had her mother, “she did not wait until the last minute to get her life in
order. She had enough oil in her lamp. She was prepared,” Sister Maria Goretti said.
Sister Maria Goretti went on to describe Sister Barbara as “a quiet, joyful, peaceful,
unassuming, holy woman,” someone who was kind and uncomplaining and “who allowed
herself to be led by the Spirit” to the Upper Peninsula, to Mount St. Mary’s, to Africa, to
South Carolina, and to many points in between.
3
She concluded her homily with these words:
Do we have Barbara’s courage, her acceptance of suffering, her patience?
Do we have oil in our lamps? Are we ready for the Bridegroom? I wonder if at
some time Barbara had the courage to pray and mean the words of St.
Ignatius: “Take, Lord, receive, all my liberty, my memory, understanding, my
entire will. Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.
Your love and your grace are enough for me.” … No more need for oil in her
lamp. She is ready. She was ready. She’s been ready. And we are blessed
for having been able to walk with her. May she now have the peace and glory
that she earned. Amen! Alleluia!
4
Left: Sisters Elizabeth Condon, left, and Barbara Hubbard at Sea of Peace House of Prayer, Edisto Island, South
Carolina. Right: Sister Barbara reads to her sister Elizabeth.
Left: Sisters ministering in California posed in this undated photo: back row, from left, Sisters Anne Russell, Una
Deasy, Romona Nowak, and Rita Eileen Dean; middle row, from left, Sisters Mary Kathleen O’Neill, Adrienne
Piennette, and Marie Wiedner; and front row, from left, Sisters Kay Muzzy, Mary Catherine Snyder, Mary Jacquemain,
and Barbara Hubbard. Right: Counter-clockwise: Sisters Dorothea Gagnon, John Dorothy (Helen) Mantovani, Ann
Christopher (Diane) Weifenbach, Edward Therese Halloran, Alice Josepha (Barbara) Hubbard, Anthony Irene
(Marlene) Kuhnlein, and Bertha Marie O’Reilly
5Center: Sisters Barbara Hubbard, left, and Elizabeth Condon in South Africa
Left: From left, Sister Barbara Hubbard, her sister Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s husband John at Sea of Peace House of
Prayer, Edisto Island, South Carolina, April 1999. Right: Sister Barbara Hubbard and her mother stand on the front
porch of the convent in Sault Ste. Marie, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, January 1952
Members of the 2010 Diamond Jubilee Class are: back row, from left, Sisters Carol Johannes, Rina Cappellazzo,
Joseph Eugene Fogarty, Barbara Hubbard, Mary Mackert, and Mary Louise Gass; middle row, from left, Sisters Joan
Marconi, Diane Erbacher, Paul James Villemure, Charlotte Francis Moser, Mary Anthony Marelli, and Kathleen
Sutherland; and front row, from left, Sisters Theodora McKennan, Mary Jo Sieg, Florence Marie Viaches, Michael
Claire Wilson, Barbara Ann Mason, and Donna Markham (Prioress).
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