Sunday, July 30, 2000

Woman records struggles

Paul Iverson/Caller-Times

Sister Irma Gonzalez (from left), Sister Philomena McCormack and Sister Dorothy Anhaiser stand in a room filled with religious artifacts collected for the 1971 centennial of the Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament.

If you read the history of the Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament, you will learn of the four sisters who left their native France in 1852 to establish the Order's cradle in the New World in Brownsville.
   But walk into the heritage room at Incarnate Word's Motherhouse on South Alameda and these daughters of the church come alive, their once personal belongings now carefully kept reminders of a perilous past where untold hardships, from religious persecution to Yellow Fever, all failed to keep the foundation from flourishing.
   "Nothing has been thrown away," says Sister Philomena McCormack, who for nearly 30 years has diligently collected and preserved items that tell the history not only of the Order, but of the accomplished musicians, poets, writers and artists who have entered the convent through the generations.
   McCormack, a retired American and world history teacher who taught at various local Catholic schools, including Incarnate Word Academy, first dug around old archives researching a display she agreed to put together for the local congregation's centennial in 1971. Little did she know that assignment would make her the trusted "keeper of the archives."
   What generations of sisters from Brownsville and Corpus Christi left behind, McCormack now neatly stores in her heritage room, including the lined traveling chest that the four pioneering French sisters packed that March of 1852 for their 40-day voyage to Galveston. Upon arriving at this Texas port, the four spent months studying English and Spanish, according to a history compiled last year by Sister Kathleen McDonagh, then continued on to Brownsville where they established their first foundation a year later.
   In 1871, the Order founded a daughter house in Corpus Christi and in 1932, the monasteries here and in Brownsville merged.
   Sister Dorothy Anhaiser, who recently joined McCormack in her archival work, says she and McCormack hope to see the historical materials housed in a new building by the year 2003, the year marking the 150th anniversary of the sisters' establishment in Texas.
  
  
 

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