Sister Leontia (Lee) Cooney, OP 1937-2021

Sister Leontia (Lee) Cooney, OP
                           1937-2021
                           County Mayo and County Armagh in Ireland were the birthplaces of,
                           respectively, Michael and Elizabeth (Dowdall) Cooney, the parents of
                           Sister Leontia Cooney.

                           Michael and Elizabeth came to Canada, where both had family, in order to
                           marry, and then moved to Detroit, where Michael got a job with the Ford
                           Motor Company. The couple had four children: Patrick; Mary; Leontia (who
                           came to be known simply as “Lee”), who was born on December 30, 1937;
                           and Michael.

All the children had their primary education with the Adrian Dominican Sisters at St. Edward School,
where in second grade Lee had her first thoughts about religious life when her teacher, Sister Fabian
Jacyna, talked to the children about what Sisters did and the relationship they had to God.

Her junior and senior years of high school were spent at St. Mary’s Commercial School, run by the
IHM Sisters. Her father wanted her to attend the commercial school because he thought secretarial
work was a good, stable job for young women, and when Lee told her parents she wanted to become
an Adrian Dominican Sister, he was hesitant. Her mother’s response, however, was that if that was
what she wanted to do, they needed to support her.

Lee did indeed enter the Congregation after her June 1955 graduation from St. Mary’s. In choosing
religious life, she was in good company in her family; both Patrick and Michael became priests, with
Patrick eventually becoming Bishop of the Diocese of Gaylord, Michigan. Mary, for her part, went into
education and spent thirty-six years teaching English literature at Cass Technical High School in
Detroit.

Sister Lee was received as a novice in December 1955, with the religious name Sister Michael
Therese. Her first teaching assignment came for the 1957-1958 school year, to St. Mary Star of the
Sea School in Chicago, followed by four years (1958-1962) at St. Luke School in Flint, Michigan.
During her time at St. Luke she completed her bachelor’s degree in history at Siena Heights College
(University) in 1960.

These turned out to be her only experiences with elementary school teaching. In October 1962, she
was sent to Aquinas College (a high school and commercial-studies program) in Nassau, the
Bahamas, to replace a Sister who was ill. “Every Saturday we were out helping the poor. I think it was
the best place that I ever was,” she said in her life story.

After three years in the Bahamas, she went on to spend a year (1965-1966) at St. Augustine High
School in Detroit, serving there as principal for what would be the school’s last year, and three years
(1966-1969) teaching at St. Lawrence High School in Utica, Michigan.

Having completed her master’s degree in guidance and counseling from Barry College (University) in
1966, Sister Lee began what became many years of ministry in that field at Dominican High School in
Detroit in 1969. She then went to Bishop Gallagher High School in nearby Harper Woods, where she
spent ten years (1975-1985), the first six years as a counselor and the last four as guidance director
and assistant principal.

It was at Bishop Gallagher that Father Michael Monshau, OP, began what became a more than forty-
year friendship with her. He told of that relationship in a remembrance after Sister Lee’s death:

       I didn’t arrive [at the school] expecting to find one of my life’s strongest groups of friends
       there, but that is what happened. Since I had known the Adrian Dominicans from my
       childhood in Joliet, Illinois, I suppose I felt reassured to find Adrian Dominicans on the
       faculty of that large high school that was so far away from anything familiar to me, and
       Lee was the first of those Sisters to help me to feel welcomed. Over time, a solid
       friendship formed between four of us on that faculty that has lasted to this day, more
       than four decades later. We were Adrian Sisters Lee Cooney and Sister Marie
       Geraldine Brownell; Jack Bellomo (a young lay teacher who was an alumnus of St.
       Ambrose and who had just left the seminary instead of taking ordination to the
       deaconate); and me. I wouldn’t imagine that we were necessarily one another’s closest
       friends since we all had many circles of friends and associates, but the bondedness
       between us took on the quality of a sibling fidelity that has lasted almost half a century.
       We’ve always been there for each other through sickness, the deaths of loved ones,
       transfers to far-away places and celebrations of life’s milestones.

       And Lee was at the center of that circle of friends, always encouraging, always willing to
       take the extra step for any of us, always faithful.

In fact, Father Monshau continued, when he first came to Bishop Gallagher he did so as a young
Christian Brother, but when it was time for him to take final vows he had begun to discern that he
should become a Dominican priest instead, and the person he turned to for guidance in the matter
was Sister Lee – or “Cooney,” as he affectionately called her.

Sister Lee left the school in 1985 to become principal of St. Jude School in Detroit and then, in 1993,
became guidance director at St. Mary Catholic Central High School in Monroe. Then, in 1998, she
was asked to become the Congregation’s coordinator of housing. As she described it in her life story,
“One of the [General Council] came into my office and asked if I knew anything about housing and I
said, ‘Not exactly,’ and she said, ‘we would like you to take that over.’” But she learned how to do the
job with the help of her brother Patrick, who had handled a similar task for his diocese, and became
highly skilled at it.

She spent a total of thirteen years serving at the Motherhouse, adding the role of campus
administrator in 2000. Then, in 2011, with her sister needing care, she left Adrian to take on that
caregiver’s role for the next five years until, with her own health and that of Mary’s both in decline,
she returned to Adrian in 2016 to live at the Dominican Life Center while Mary moved to a nearby
nursing facility and remained there until her death in 2019.

Sister Lee died at the DLC on February 12, 2021. She was eighty-three years old and in her sixty-fifth
year in the Congregation.

Among the remembrances of her in addition to Father Michael Monshau’s was this one from Sister
Mary Ann Ennis:

       …With Lee it was always yes. Even when she didn’t know what to do she would find
       out. As administrator of Madden the workmen came one of the first days she was in her
       office and said, “Sister, you need to come with us.” As they stood looking at a hole with
       broken pipes she said, “Tell me what I am looking at.” Lee, perhaps now you are saying
       to your family and the God of the cosmos with delight and joy, “Tell me what I am
       looking at.”

Candy Strine, Co-worker in Campus Administration, wrote this:

      Sister Lee was many things to me. She was my boss, a colleague, a friend and a
      reminder that our faith is what keeps us going in the rough times. She was there for me
      many times with laughter and many words of encouragement. … My working with her
      covered many years, and through that we learned when to say yea or nay. We spent
      many hours going over budgets and housing plans for the meetings. We always knew
      that she was the boss but treats us that worked with her as a team more than anyone I
      know. … She was so thrilled when I met my husband Dan. She told me he was a
      keeper and told him that he’d better be good to me or else the wrath of the Sisters
      would be after him. He laughs about that to this day. I thank God for my time with her
      and I miss her very much. She was such a warrior and a beautiful person.

Liisa Speaker, who “was very lucky to have Sister Lee Cooney as my godmother,” recalled how “you
could tell she was a great teacher, counselor, and school administrator in the way she always
encouraged me and shared her sage advice about all things academic.”

Sister Lee’s cousin Patrick Linehan mentioned the many times Sister Lee and Mary visited the family
in New York while he was growing up and described how, when he was stationed in Michigan during
his Army service, he and his own family got to spend holidays with Sister Lee and her sister. “The
Cooneys were here for me and my wife when our fourth son was born and had a tough time for the
first few months,” he wrote. “Family support was important to us at that time and Lee and Maureen
[as Mary was often called] were there for us in a difficult time.”

Sister Anneliese Sinnott wrote the homily for Sister Lee’s funeral.

      When asked what word would describe Lee’s life, several members of her crowd said
      “faithfulness.” … Lee responded to the call of God over the years. She went as far south
      as the Bahamas and as far north as Flint, Michigan. She taught, she counseled, she
      organized and led. But perhaps Lee’s most faithful ministry was to her sister Mary.

      … We thank God for your life of fidelity and generosity. May you join your brother
      Patrick, your sister Mary and your brother Michael as you take your place at the
      heavenly banquet!

Right: Serving in Nassau, the Bahamas, are, from left, Sister Anne Liam Lees, Valerie Doro,
                        and Sister Leontia (Michael Theresa) Cooney.

Left: Leontia Cooney, left, with her sister, Mary Alice. Right: 1955 high school graduation photo

Left: Members of the Cooney family are, from left, Patrick Ronald Cooney, Michael and Elizabeth Cooney (parents),
   Father Michael Noel Cooney, Sister Leontia Cooney, and Mary Alice Cooney. Right: From left, Sisters Mary Ellen
                        Youngblood, Maria Odelia Romero, Shirley Ruder, and Leontia Cooney

Left: From left, Sisters Shirley Ruder and Leontia Cooney. Right: Enjoying a Jubilee dinner are, from left, Sisters Noreen
 George, Carol Fleming, Marion O’Connor, Marie Bride Walsh, Leontia Cooney, Jean Kathleen Comiskey, and Thomas
                                                      James Burns.

Members of the 2015 Diamond Jubilee December Crowd are: back row, from left, Sisters Rosalie Esquerra, Kathleen
  Waters, Norine Burns, Molly Nicholson, Sheila Delaney, and Nancyann Turner; second row, from left, Sisters Leontia
Cooney, Barbara Long, Margaret Manners, Mary Kastens, and Joan Leo Kehn; third row, from left, Sisters Mary Hemmen,
  Anneliese Sinnott, Joan Mary, Jo Ann Lucas, and Elizabeth Gibbons; and front row, from left, Sisters Esther Ortega,
                            Marilyn Uline, Arlene Seckel, Ann Ziemba, and Jovanna Stein.