Sister Margaret Ann Zinselmeyer, OSU - "She's worth her weight in diamonds..."

       Sister Margaret Ann Zinselmeyer has never been one to ask many questions.
       Not when the mother superior of the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph came to visit her and offered her a chance to join a community she’d never seen.
       Not when an opportunity came to run a day care center for children infected or affected by HIV.
       Not even when one of those children, left with no one to care for her, needed a mother to adopt her.
       Sister Margaret Ann just followed the instruction of Saint Angela Merici, founder of the Ursuline Sisters, to “Act, move, and believe.”
      These days, Sister Margaret Ann is busy as assistant executive director of Hope House in Memphis, Tenn., a day care center for children 6 weeks to 6 years who either were born with HIV, or who have a family member with the virus. She’s been there since its inception in 1995, running the day-to-day operation.
      For the past five years she’s also acted as mother for an outgoing 6-year-old girl named Adasia, a role that became official on May 22, 2006 when Sister Margaret Ann adopted her.
      “She needed to know she was chosen and belonged,” Sister Margaret Ann said.
      Those who know Sister Margaret Ann well speak of a dedication beyond what anyone could expect.
      “Hope House never would have happened without Sister Margaret Ann,” said her longtime friend, fellow Ursuline Sister Maureen Griner. “She really has had the vision for Hope House.
      “Whatever has to be done, she does, from driving the van, to fixing the toilets, to calming parents down, to having a listening ear for the staff,” Sister Maureen said. “She has the heart for it. People in the city equate Hope House with Marge.”
      Gayle Hapner teaches the 3-year-old “busy bees” at Hope House. She and Sister Margaret Ann have worked together for more than 10 years.
      “She’s the only reason I won’t leave Hope House, unless my husband gets reassigned,” Hapner said. “I’ve never worked with anybody who’s been such a part of her profession that everyone matters to her. I’ll never find that anywhere else,” she said. “This is the best job I’ve ever had.”

Growing up

       Someday running a day care center seemed like a remote possibility for the bright, introverted girl who grew up in St. Louis, where her father was a bank president and her mother a homemaker. She attended Seven Holy Founders School in nearby Affton, which was mostly staffed by Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph.
       “There were 21 (sisters) on staff,” Sister Margaret Ann said. “I went to school there eight years, and I only had two lay teachers, the rest were Ursulines.”
       The School Sisters of Notre Dame taught her at Notre Dame High School in St. Louis. Twelve of her classmates joined the School Sisters, but Sister Margaret Ann was the only one who joined the Ursulines.

       “I didn’t really know anything about the Ursulines,” she said. “I’d never seen the Motherhouse, I didn’t know what postulants wore or anything about the formation program.”        
       She credits some of the Ursuline teachers she had with spurring her interest, especially her eighth-grade teacher, Sister Marie Goretti Browning.
       “She told me (about my influence) when she came and it thrilled me so much,” said Sister Marie Goretti, who lives at the Motherhouse. “There were a group of girls in that class who had such a wonderful spirit.”
       She calls Sister Margaret Ann a joy to be around.
       “I lived with her while we were at the Mount, and we worked together some, so after awhile you forget you were her teacher, and we became peers,” Sister Marie Goretti said. “It’s good to see how much she’s accomplished."
       Sister Margaret Ann said she always knew she’d become a sister. “My mother always knew it too,” she said.
       During her senior year of high school, Sister Margaret Ann was accepted at Barnes College of Nursing in St. Louis, but had also written a letter to the Ursuline vocations director expressing interest in the congregation.

       “Mother Joseph Marian Logsdon was coming through St. Louis and wanted to meet with me,” Sister Margaret Ann said. She told her mother she’d be back in 15 minutes, but her mother was astonished when she returned so quickly.
        "I said, ‘Mom, she said I could come.’ I don’t ask many questions.”
        During her postulancy year at Mount Saint Joseph, Sister Margaret Ann’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
        “It was 1968, they didn’t have the treatment back then, there was no chemo,” Sister Margaret Ann said. “She also wouldn’t have surgery until after Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
        The Ursuline rules in those days limited sisters in their postulancy to one visit per month, and they weren’t allowed to call home. But Sister Margaret Ann got permission to call home once a week to check on her mother.
        “She told everyone I was not to leave the convent because she was sick,” Sister Margaret Ann said.
        Virginia Zinselmeyer died in May 1968, leaving behind four sons and two daughters. Sister Margaret Ann remembers her mother as very giving, someone who created a wonderful home environment.
        “Holidays were so important to her,” she said. “She felt so strongly about family. I pray to her a lot with Adasia. I don’t know how she did it with six kids.”
        Eight months after his wife died, Arthur Zinselmeyer remarried. His new wife, Mary Spillane, had four daughters and had been a widow for 10 years. The Zinselmeyer family faced some awkward times.
       “When my dad got sick in June 2006, we gathered as a family and it gelled us,” Sister Margaret Ann said. “I could see how much he meant to them.”
       Her father was a banker who believed the customer came first. Late in his career, he lost his sight, but could still recognize regular customers by their voice. He died in December 2006.
       “I miss him a lot,” she said. “It’s still difficult to let him go.”

On the mission

    The late ‘60s were an odd time to be in religious life, Sister Margaret Ann said. “They were changing what they could wear, if they could minister other than teaching,” she said. “The sisters were divided into camps.”
    Sister Margaret Ann had a degree in math and elementary education, but at her first teaching job in 1972, at Saint James School in Louisville, she didn’t teach math. She stayed there for a year until an opening came in 1973 to be a math teacher at Saint Bernard in Louisville. She lived with many sisters, including Sister Mary Irene Cecil.
    “She was a very enthusiastic teacher, especially in math,” said Sister Mary Irene, who now works in pastoral care at the Motherhouse. “I thought she would stick with teaching math for quite a while, but the Lord leads us to a different path.”
    From 1975-79, Sister Margaret Ann taught at Mount Saint Joseph Academy, and it was during those years that she began to think teaching was not the vocation she wanted.
    “We had a lot of kids whose parents didn’t know what to do with them,” Sister Margaret Ann said. “We didn’t have any counselors on the staff.” With a boarding school, the teaching staff always had to be ready to help a student, and that started to weigh on Sister Margaret Ann.
    “I think I would have liked a regular high school,” she said. “But I’d never go back to teaching now.”
    In 1979, the community sent her to Eastern Kentucky University to get a master’s degree in math. When Sister Margaret Ann got her bachelor’s degree from Brescia in 1973, there were no computers in use, but by the time she went to EKU, she had to learn a computer language to keep up with the classes.
    When she completed her degree, she returned to the Motherhouse as an assistant to Sister Joseph Angela Boone in the business office, where she stayed for 10 years.
    “We introduced the first computers at the Mount,” Sister Margaret Ann said. “I did a tax program so I didn’t have to do the W-2s by hand anymore.”
    Sister Joseph Angela, now chancellor and director of administration for the Diocese of Owensboro, raves about the job Sister Margaret Ann did.
    “She was the most capable, talented person I’ve ever worked with,” Sister Joseph Angela said. “She’s very intelligent and could figure out things on her own. She wrote our own payroll program when we first got computers in 1982.”
    While Sister Joseph Angela would not have foreseen a ministry such as Hope House for Sister Margaret Ann, she knew she loved children.
    “She was very sensitive to the needs of children,” Sister Joseph Angela said. “She had a lot of illness in her family and I think that made her more sensitive.”

    Sister Margaret Ann spent her last five years in the business office also being the liturgist for the Motherhouse. “I’ve never done just one thing since I quit teaching,” she said.
    She decided she wanted to do something with liturgy as the next step in her career. From 1990-92 she was pastoral minister at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Decatur, Ill. “It was a very active parish. I helped computerize their collections and data base,” she said.
    Sister Maureen and she had been friends for years, but they had never lived together. In 1992, Sister Maureen was moving to Memphis to be diocesan director of music, and she asked Sister Margaret Ann if she could find a job there as well. That job was as a pastoral minister at Saint Ann Church in the suburb of Bartlett, Tenn.
    In 1995, an opening at Hope House came and Sister Maureen urged her friend to apply. She recalled that Sister Margaret Ann had said years before that she’d like to work with children affected by HIV.
    “I don’t know where that desire came from,” Sister Margaret Ann said. “When I was working at the Motherhouse and the academy had closed, I was talking about an orphanage for children with HIV.”
    She never thought she’d end up working in a day care center. “I thought I was applying to be the business manager or accountant,” she said.
    She served as the administrative director from 1995 until the director left in 1998, then she took over as day care director. Her title changed to assistant executive director in 2000.
    “I relate better to children,” Sister Margaret Ann said. After she graduated in December 2006 with a master’s degree in early childhood development, her confidence grew in running the day care.
    “I intuitively knew some things, but I didn’t have the schooling to back it up,” she said.
    Her commitment to Hope House traces to her Ursuline roots.
    “It’s never been just a job,” she said. “That’s the Ursuline part, the Angela (Merici) part. It’s a ministry here and now.”

Hope House

    Betty Dupont, executive director of Hope House, said Sister Margaret Ann’s commitment to Hope House is beyond what any other staff member’s could be.
    “She was here when the doors opened,” Dupont said. “Without that level of commitment, I don’t think we would be alive today. I’m so grateful for the support of her community allowing her to be here.”
     Dupont  handles more public relations, fundraising and community involvement, while Sister Margaret Ann does the day-to-day running of the day care center. The two have a good relationship, if not always a smooth one.
    “We struggle because we’re both about the same age and both strong women and we have definite ideas about how to care for our children,” Dupont said. “But in the end, that struggle helps us come out better.”
     The dedication and love Sister Margaret Ann has for the families and their children makes all the difference in Hope House’s success, Dupont said.

    “She’s worth her weight in diamonds, not gold,” Dupont said.
    Maria Randall has been director of social services at Hope House since 2001. One role is to oversee a play therapy room for children who’ve been exposed to trauma, such as the little boy who was in the car in which his father was murdered.
    “This is a haven,” Randall said.
    She and Sister Margaret Ann have worked well together since day one.
    “She wears so many hats here,” Randall said. “She’s a master of all trades. She knows it inside and out.”
    She credits their working relationship to a strong faith base, a commitment to ethical and honest treatment, and their ability to forgive. There’s also a part of their personalities that helps the relationship.
    “She’s an introvert and I’m an extrovert,” Randall said with a smile.
    Hapner said Sister Margaret Ann simply makes Hope House a better place.
      “She strives to make sure everyone’s needs are met in and outside the classroom,” Hapner said.

       “She’s been there for me during difficult personal issues and professional issues. I’ve never been judged about anything in my private life.”
      Some of the staff members aren’t coming from a much better situation than the families being served, and often live paycheck to paycheck, Hapner said.
      Sister Margaret Ann said the teachers at Hope House have to set small goals for the children, because they don’t start out at the same level as other children. “No one is reading to them at home,” she said. Children have to be taught how to eat, speak, sit at a table and many other tasks that others take for granted.
      Working with families who routinely come from tragic circumstances has changed Sister Margaret Ann’s outlook.
      “It takes you out of yourself,” she said. “The first few years, I thought, ‘I can’t relate to these people. I grew up in the middle class. I can’t identify with people with no education, who don’t work and who live in the housing projects forever.’
      “Slowly you start to treat them as people and some of them as peers, especially after I got Adasia,” she said. “Your stereotypes leave. They are struggling. They’ve been raped, abused, or had bad parents.”

Adasia

      Adasia’s entry into the world was something of a miracle. Her mother had full-blown AIDS and was an active crack cocaine user when she became pregnant with Adasia and when she gave birth. She was 37, but looked 75, Sister Margaret Ann said.
       Two of Adasia’s siblings attended Hope House before her. “When I first saw Adasia, I said, ‘She’s a fighter,’” Sister Margaret Ann said. “The care-giving she got at Hope House saved her.”
      St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis has a pediatric AIDS program, and provides free drugs needed for the children’s survival. But there’s a protocol that must be followed when administering the drugs, and often the parents lack the discipline to give them on time, Sister Margaret Ann said.
      Randall once visited Adasia’s home and almost sat on her because there was so much trash piled on the bed where Adasia slept, Sister Margaret Ann said.
      Adasia turned 1 in May 2003, and in June, St. Jude had Adasia removed from the home, along with the other children, for their safety. Adasia’s mother died July 31.

     The woman’s oldest daughter was 18 and considered an adult, but she had a couple of her own children already. The children’s fathers were not considered suitable options for their care. At a custody hearing, an aunt took Adasia’s two brothers, and a cousin took her two sisters.
     No one was able to care for Adasia.
     Sister Margaret Ann had joked with Randall over the previous year about wanting to take Adasia home with her. Now Randall wanted to know if she was serious. A hearing would decide where Adasia would live.
    Sister Margaret Ann said she didn’t expect it to be with her.
    “I’m white, I’m not a relative and the foster parent had some intention of taking her,” she said.
    When Sister Margaret Ann went to the hearing, she didn’t know the foster parent had dropped out. The hearing took five minutes and 16-month-old Adasia went back to Hope House with Sister Margaret Ann.
    “People, especially Ursuline associates, started bringing clothes, cribs, diapers …” Sister Margaret Ann said.
    Adasia was baptized Jan. 11, 2004, on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Her godparents are lifetime Ursuline Associates Carolyn and Benjamin Head.
    At her adoption on May 22, 2006, Adasia’s name was officially changed to Zinselmeyer.
    “At St. Jude they say, ‘Adasia Zinselmeyer?’” Sister Margaret Ann said of the strange name combination. “I say, ‘Doesn’t she look German?’”
    Adasia takes medicine at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. every day. Even missing the dosage by an hour causes the virus to begin replicating, Sister Maureen said.
    Adasia will be on medication all her life, but now her viral load is undetectable. Chances are low that Sister Margaret Ann could contract HIV from her, she said. There’s a good chance that if Adasia has children some day, she won’t pass the virus on to them.
    One girl who started at Hope House in its early days is 17 now, so she gives Sister Margaret Ann hope.
    One of Sister Margaret Ann’s classmates in the novitiate was Sister Claudia Hayden, who works as a staff nurse at Mount Saint Joseph and is raising her niece and two nephews. She said the two have talked about raising children.
     “Marge is really smart and she has a natural skill with children,” Sister Claudia said. “I just recall her on campus with sisters’ nieces and nephews who were toddlers or preschoolers. She has a big heart.”
    Sister Margaret Ann concedes she always wanted to be a mother, but she attributes a “mini-spiritual conversion” between 2001-2003 as playing a role in adopting Adasia.

      “I was just open to it,” she said.
       The pitfalls of becoming Adasia’s mother – concerns from the Ursuline community, the costs of Adasia’s future health and education needs, Sister Margaret Ann’s age of 58  – were nothing to prevent her from acting.
      “You just don’t worry about it,” she said.
      “I told her she can be anything she wants as long as she gets a scholarship,” she said.
      Sister Margaret Ann’s family was ecstatic by the addition of Adasia. “She and my dad bonded really well, and she and her Grandma Mary also,” Sister Margaret Ann said.
      Adasia goes to dance class, and her competitive streak often results in a challenge to her mother to race. Like many children, she thinks her mother should be more patient, Sister Margaret Ann said.
      “She’s got a great sense of wonder,” Sister Margaret Ann said. “She’s broadened my world. It’s like God, you don’t know what’s going to happen next. She drew a picture in her school when my dad died that said, ‘My grandpa is an angel who watches over me.’”
      Sister Margaret Ann sees beautiful children each day who come from a tragic home life. What made Adasia the one she decided to adopt?
      “She’s such a fighter. She had nobody,” Sister Margaret Ann said. “I never had an affinity with anyone like I did with Adasia.”
      No questions asked.

- By Dan Heckel