As she passed a water fountain in the hallway of Marion County High School in Lebanon, Ky., Sister Mary Lois Speaks stopped and made sure the handle was pushed to the “off” position.

Sister Mary Lois sits with her aunt, Sister Mary Boniface Speaks. Sister Mary Lois credits her aunt with introducing her to the Holy Spirit.

       “We have 89 percent of the world without clean drinking water, and we waste it,” she said.
       Sister Mary Lois has been seeing needs and trying to fill them for 45 years as an Ursuline Sister of Mount Saint Joseph. These days, her ministry is working with teenagers who’ve run afoul of the rules at the high school where she’s worked for more than 10 years.
       Her title is in-school detention aide at the school in scenic central Kentucky. Sister Mary Lois does some counseling, guidance or whatever needs to be done to help students get back in a regular classroom. Most of her day is spent in one room, working with a mixture of middle or high school students making sure they are completing work assigned by their regular teachers.
       “Due to health reasons, I can’t stand for long periods, so this keeps me in the classroom,” Sister Mary Lois said. “Education has been my life.”
       How this Henderson, Ky., native ended up as the only Ursuline Sister in heavily Catholic Marion County started with her days as a sophomore at Mount Saint Joseph Academy in Maple Mount, Ky.
       Her freshman year at the academy, Sister Mary Lois said there was no one to show her classmates the ropes. So as sophomores, her class decided to adopt “little sisters” among the freshmen. Her little sister that year was Phyllis Troutman.
       After graduation, the two went their separate ways, but their friendship remained. It was Sister Mary Lois’ aunt, Sister Mary Boniface Speaks, who brought the two back together.
       “Sister Mary Boniface was my mentor,” Phyllis said. “She gave me my start in business. Math, typing, shorthand, she taught me all those.”
       Sister Mary Lois was director of the Ursuline Associates from 1991-96, and during that time, Sister Mary Boniface grew ill. Phyllis came to the Mount often to visit her, and her friendship with Sister Mary Lois was rekindled.
       Sister Mary Lois started visiting associates where they lived, and Phyllis, an associate since 1993, asked her to hold meetings on faith-building, adult education, and women’s support near her home in the tiny Marion County town of Raywick.
       “There’s still a lot of bondage in marriage in (Marion County),” Sister Mary Lois said. “I did a lot of Angela (Merici) teaching with them on self-esteem and individualization, to help them see they were equal in the relationship.”

Ursuline Associate Phyllis Troutman stands with Sister Mary Lois inside the Clean As A Whistle car wash in Lebanon. Phyllis and Sister Mary Lois are best friends and next door neighbors.

       After leaving the associate program in 1996, Sister Mary Lois went to Loyola University in Chicago to attend the Institute for Spiritual Leadership.
       “I’d always done a lot of active listening, spiritual direction, and pastoral counseling, but I wanted a supervisor to determine if the skill was there,” she said.
      While in Chicago, Phyllis told her over the phone that she needed to replace the people renting her former home next door, and Sister Mary Lois joked, “save it for me.” When none of the opportunities for ministry appealed to her when she returned to Kentucky, she asked Phyllis if there were any openings in Marion County.
       “I wanted a calmer pace than a parish coordinator, and I didn’t want to be in a city,” Sister Mary Lois said. “These rolling, green knobs suit me.”
       After a short stint at the Marion County Adjustment Center in late 1997, she was hired at the high school in December of that year, and became Phyllis’s next-door neighbor.
       “They needed an adult to be on the side of the kids,” Sister Mary Lois said. “For the first three years, I was the go-to person if anyone was upset (students or parents). That was my best time here,” she said. “Mr. (Robert) Barr, the principal, was the only one who understood my gifts.”
       After Barr left in 2000, Sister Mary Lois was asked to fill the role with in-school detention. She sees many teens who come from a home filled with drugs and abuse.
       “Any one of them deserves a purple heart just for showing up,” she said.
       Brenda McIlvoy, the director of in-school detention for three years, said trying to do her job without Sister Mary Lois’ help would be difficult.
       “Sister Mary Lois is very organized and very conscientious about her work,” McIlvoy said.
       Being an Ursuline Sister in a public school is certainly different than in a Catholic school, Sister Mary Lois said. “Those with social skills will ask me questions about what it means to be a sister,” she said. “One student asked if he decided to become a Catholic, would I help him? I can talk about it if they bring it up. If I brought it up, they’d throw me out on my ear.”
       The biggest difference between Catholic and public schools is “discipline, handwriting, neatness and the dress,” Sister Mary Lois said. She said the worst part is the lack of respect for authority, but she realizes the students with whom she works skew her perspective.
       “I only see 3 to 5 percent of the student population,” she said. “They’ve already been abused by adults, so they don’t trust and they don’t relate.”
       In a discernment sheet, she once wrote, “When their anger and disrespect doesn’t affect me personally, I’ll know it’s time to leave.”

Sister Mary Lois stands next to a dresser vanity top in her home that she got out of storage from the former Maple Hall at Mount Saint Joseph Academy. Once she got it home, she noticed an identifiable scratch that told her it was the same vanity she had as a high school freshman.

Coming of age

       Sister Mary Lois was the sixth of eight children born to Raymond and Catherine Speaks, the youngest girl. Her mother was a housewife, her father a farmer in Henderson County, until the family moved to the city when she was 12, and her dad became the janitor at Holy Name of Jesus Church in Henderson.
       “I hated to leave the country,” she said. “God is so near in nature.”
       Sister Mary Boniface asked all her siblings to send their daughters to Mount Saint Joseph Academy. “One day my mom asked what I would think of going to the Mount, and I said, ‘I’d love to,’” Sister Mary Lois said. “I’d never been so homesick in my life.”
       She was the first member of her family to be born in Henderson County. The family lived in Union County, but moved when the federal government took their land in 1942 as part of the 36,000 acres to build a World War II training camp called Camp Breckenridge. “We were supposed to get it back, but it’s still in litigation,” she said.
       The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth taught Sister Mary Lois in grade school, but it was during her freshman year at the academy that she decided the Ursulines were the right community for her.
       “After Christmas break, we got a weekend retreat. That’s when I thought I should enter Mount Saint Joseph,” Sister Mary Lois said. “Their friendliness was so good.”
       Sister Mary Lois said Sister Mary Boniface was a major influence on her becoming an Ursuline. She graduated from the academy in June 1962, and entered the postulancy that September.
       “She loved me more than I deserved,” Sister Mary Lois said. “She started carrying two handkerchiefs to meet my needs. I’d just cry on her shoulder.”
       She credits Sister Mary Boniface with introducing her to the Holy Spirit. “She made my side rosary when I graduated. When we no longer had to wear them, I asked permission to keep mine.” Sister Mary Boniface died Oct. 15, 1992.

On the road with the Ursulines

Sister Mary Lois helps a student in her classroom at Marion County High School.

       In September 1966, prior to graduating from Brescia College, Sister Mary Lois was sent to teach at Saint Ignatius School in Louisville, Ky., until Thanksgiving, to replace a teacher who was ill. Many teachers were needed to fill vacant slots in those days. From there she went to Saint Alphonsus School, right across the highway from Mount Saint Joseph, for the rest of the school year. In August 1967, she began teaching at Blessed Mother School in Owensboro, Ky., for the semester.
       In January 1968, she took 1½ years of college in one semester at Brescia to finish her degree.
       “It’s amazing to look back to say, ‘How did I do that?’ and ‘Why did I do that?’” Sister Mary Lois said. “It was for the grace and the call.”
       She spent a couple of years teaching at Saint John School in Plattsmouth, Neb., before being named principal at Sacred Heart School in Russellville, Ky., in 1970.
       “I got asked to be a principal before I made my final profession,” Sister Mary Lois said. “I was 26.”
       She split her time in the 1970s between school and parish ministry. From 1972-76, she was parish coordinator at Saint Pius X in Owensboro, then was principal at Saint Leonard School in Louisville from 1979-82. She was parish coordinator at Saint Columba in Louisville from 1979-82.
       “I did work for the diocese while I was at Saint Pius, and at the same time, my brother-in-law was dying, so I was trying to be a support,” she said. Fortunately, the priest she worked with in Russellville also came to Saint Pius, Father Paul Pike Powell, and the two have remained friends.
       “I appreciate her insights,” Father Powell said. “She had a deeper vision of the future of religious life and the church than a lot of people did.”
       When she ran CCD classes, “she had a way of bringing the children out, letting them have their say, and leaving them with the truth,” Father Powell said.
       During the summers, she attended Western Kentucky University to earn her master’s in education, while also working toward her master’s in theological studies at Saint Meinrad, Ind.

Sister Mary Lois looks over some class work with a student at Marion County High School.

       “I’ve never done just one thing, other than when I was director of associates,” she said.
       The charismatic renewal effort was meeting at Saint Columba in her days there, and one night, the pastor didn’t show up. Sister Mary Lois was asked to answer some questions. The couple organizing the effort and the priest in charge were impressed enough to ask Sister Mary Lois to become the theologian and coordinator.
       She ministered in that role from 1982-89, at times through a lot of anguish.
       “Many people were angry with the church and were leaving,” she said. “I was trying to hold that together.” She described the charismatic effort as the difference between meeting in the spirit and meeting in the sacraments. She believes both are important.
       “The church was so divided. The pastors didn’t believe in it, and people (were resistant.) I got physically removed from a deacon’s house one day,” she said.
       There were some positives she took from her years there. While helping her sister care for her two young children, Sister Mary Lois hurt her back and learned she had a degenerative disc. For 1½ years she had to spend three days each month in traction just so she could stay on her feet, and the pain was always with her. One day, she asked her charismatic renewal prayer group to pray over her. Within two weeks, the pain was gone, although the stiffness in her back remains.
       “I’ve learned a lot about giving up control with my body,” she said. “I can read faces and can tell if people are in pain, either physically or emotionally.”
       Following her time in Louisville, Sister Mary Lois spent nearly two years on sabbatical at Emmaus House in St. Louis, to help her put the tensions in her life in perspective.
       “I rededicated myself to the community and spiritual life. I came home to myself,” she said. “It was so peaceful, so rewarding.”

Ursuline Associates

       She came back to Mount Saint Joseph in the summer of 1991 to take over Ursuline Associates from Sister Fran Wilhelm, who had started the effort in 1983 and had done an amazing job of recruiting associates, Sister Mary Lois said.

A corner of one room in Sister Mary Lois’ home in Raywick is devoted to Ursuline founder Saint Angela Merici.

       Her first job was to get more organized, and to start reaching out to the associates where they lived. An advisory board was begun, a prayer book was created and the Update newsletter was started. Sister Mary Lois serves on the advisory board now, but will be leaving that position July 1. She thinks the associates have a direct relationship with Saint Angela Merici, the founder of the Ursuline congregation.
       “She always had the laity involved,” Sister Mary Lois said. “I think Sister Fran’s vision of that was anointed. As (sisters) have diminished in number, it’s a new form of Ursuline charism at work.”
       Sister Mary Lois offers much insight and dedication to the associates, said Marian Bennett, director of Ursuline Partnerships.
       “She strives to be the most useful in whatever way is needed,” Marian said. “She’s just a delight. She has a wonderful sense of humor.”
       Sister Lennora Carrico, who is retired and lives at the Mount Saint Joseph Motherhouse, has a special friendship with Sister Mary Lois which dates back to a time when one of Sister Mary Lois’ friends was ill and Sister Lennora comforted her.
       Sister Lennora said it is Sister Mary Lois’ compassion for others that makes her special.
       “She’s right there in case anything happens, you can depend on her,” Sister Lennora said. “She’s there for anyone who needs her.”

Finding her place

       One regret Sister Mary Lois has is not speaking up enough when she was younger.
       “I tried to be who others wanted me to be, instead of who I am,” she said. “I had to relearn some things and forget some things.”
       It was a process that took 17 years, until she was 42.
       “I was at Gethsemane (Abbey in Nelson County, Ky.) on Ascension Thursday, it was an epiphany moment for me,” she said. “Just hearing a meadowlark and knowing I was free. The insight was as clear as the meadowlark’s voice,” Sister Mary Lois said. “Three of them passed my windshield on my way home, in honor of the trinity.”
       One of her passions in recent years is as a board member for UNANIMA International, a nongovernmental group of women religious that helps shape policies that promote the welfare of women and children. The group is focusing on reducing human trafficking.
       Sister Mary Lois sees a lot of Angela Merici’s teachings in UNANIMA.
       “Angela knew young women needed to be protected and formed,” she said.

Sister Mary Lois relaxes in her backyard swing. She and Phyllis Troutman often sit on the swing and talk.

       Sister Mary Lois traveled to New York in March for a UNANIMA board meeting to further discuss efforts to raise awareness of human trafficking. She will leave the board next year, but would like to rejoin in the future.

The Future

      Aside from her work at the high school these days, Sister Mary Lois does some spiritual direction and active listening in an office adjacent to Phyllis Troutman’s car wash, Clean As A Whistle.
       She plans to retire from the school in two years and would like to do some writing about Angela Merici, and also share with people lessons she’s learned.
       “My passion is to speak of the Lord, because I have been so blessed, so spoiled,” she said. “I’d like to show what I’ve experienced, to awaken it in others.”
       She’d prefer to stay in Marion County to reach out to those who are bereaving, and to stay close to her friend Phyllis.
       Phyllis calls Sister Mary Lois “a jewel” for her kindness and ways.
       “She can read you like a book,” Phyllis said. “She’ll tell you who you are.”
       The two eat together often, play cards with the elderly or visit those who are sick, Phyllis said. She credits Sister Mary Lois with helping her break from her workaholic ways.
       “I tell her I didn’t know there was a sky until she came along,” Phyllis said. “I enjoy life a lot more now. We love to be outside, we’ll just sit in the swing and chat.”
       Sister Mary Lois said whatever setbacks she’s had, the joy has outweighed them all.
       “When I look back at the crosses I’ve carried, I’m grateful,” she said. “I try to learn from it all.”

- By Dan Heckel