Our History

XI.  Proclaiming Jubilee

In 1998, the Community proclaimed the four years leading up to the Community centennial as Jubilee:

1998 - We proclaim the Renewal of the Sabbath

1999 - We proclaim Forgiveness and Reconciliation

2000 - We proclaim our Connectedness

2001 - We proclaim Justice and Peace

2002 - We proclaim Celebration

 

In preparation for a new millennium and the beginning of another century in Kansas, the Community adopted a corporate stance against the death penalty and a corporate stance for kinship with and reverence for the Earth.

XII. Celebrating 100 years

Hearts ablaze in Jubilee!  The proclamation was a rousing call.  Four years of preparation for the Dominicans of the Kansas prairie before they would celebrate 100 years.  The biblical jubilee themes emerged as the focus for kindling.  In 1998 the Community was challenged to a “Renewal of the Sabbath,” to be conscious that indeed every day calls one to set aside time for prayer and thanksgiving.  The year 1999 was dedicated to “Forgiveness and Reconciliation,” offering opportunities to make right all relationships.  During the year the Community took a corporate stance against the death penalty.  In 2000 the theme of “Our Connectedness” received attention.  Kinship with and Reverence for Earth was approved as a corporate stance.  Throughout all the preparation years, the summer theology workshops, yearly retreats, community gatherings and study heightened each one’s awareness and summoned all to make their hearts ablaze as the year 2002, the year of “Celebration” dawned.

 

Decade Highlights

1902 - Seven sisters and two candidates leave New York for Kansas.  They open St Mary Academy in Great Bend; this marks the beginning of nearly 100 years of educational ministry.

1903 - Sisters open St Rose Hospital in Great Bend

1905 - Community celebrates final vows for the first time.

1907 - Mother Antonina names a council to assist her. Ground is broken for a 13 room addition to St Rose Hospital.

1908  - New hospital addition is dedicated.

1910   - Mother Antonina resigns and leaves Great Bend.  Sr Seraphine Weisenberg is appointed major superior.  Sisters staff seven schools during this first decade.

1912  - Throughout the next decade, sisters staff four schools. Remodeled motherhouse opens as Immaculate Conception Convent.

1915 - City of Great Bend is hit by a tornado; sisters care for injured.

1917 - St Rose School of Nursing opens.

1918   - Sisters purchase an automobile.

1920  - Mother Antonina dies and is buried in Mission San Jose, California.  First graduation class of nurses receives RN pins. 

1922   - Throughout the next decade, sisters staff eight schools.  New 75-bed St Rose Hospital is built.  Mother Bona Silberhorn is elected major superior.

1924 - Community is officially affiliated with the Order of Friars Preachers. Sixteen sisters, born in Europe, become US citizens.

1925   - Sr Seraphine elected major superior.

1927  - A 50-bed addition is added to St Rose Hospital.

1928  - Mother Seraphine re-elected and dies within the year. Mother Rose McFadden assumes duties.

1931  -  Sisters staff three schools during this next decade. Mother Rose is elected major superior.  A 50-bed hospital is purchased in Garden City and named St Catherine Hospital; it becomes the 12th Catholic hospital in the state.

1933   - Mother Rose dies.

1934   - Sr Inviolata Beran elected major superior.

1938   - Rosary Shrine is established.

1940   - Ground broken for new motherhouse. Sr Aloysia Rachbauer elected major superior.

1941    - Sisters staff four schools during this next decade. New motherhouse is dedicated.

1946   - Mother Aloysia re-elected major superior. Sisters begin operating Sacred Heart Hospital, Lamar, CO. 

1948   - Sr Loretta Feinler, foundress of St Rose Hospital, dies.

1949   - Ground broken for St Joseph Memorial Hospital, Larned, KS.

1951    - Sisters staff five schools during this next decade.  The Wichita Diocese is divided and the Great Bend Community becomes part of a new Dodge City Diocese.  St Joseph Memorial Hospital in Larned is completed.

1952   - Sisters celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the Community.  City council grants permission for sisters to establish their own cemetery; Mother Antonina’s remains are sent from Mission San Jose, California to Great Bend to be buried in the new Calvary Cemetery.  Mother Aloysia is re-elected major superior. Community membership reaches 200.  First Vocation Day is held at the motherhouse.

1954   - Community receives the Decretum Laudis and is free to minister wherever needed in the world.  Dominican School of Nursing opens. Sunday Thomist lectures begin a 14-year series.

1956   - Srs Raphael Husman, Frances Biernacki and Charlotte Unrein go to Nigeria as Community’s first foreign missionaries.  A new constitution is distributed.

1958   - Sr Francesca Schinstock is elected mother general.

1961    - Ground broken for a new hospital to replace St Rose Hospital in Great Bend. Sisters staff 12 schools during this decade.

1964   - Mother Francesca re-elected major superior.  New hospital, Central Kansas Medical Center, is dedicated.

1965   - Flood strikes Great Bend; sisters assist residents. Sisters open  prep school for girls in Nigeria.

1967   - Srs Marietta Urban and Diane Traffas, teachers at the Nigerian prep school, barely escape during the Biafran War.

1968   - Sisters are allowed to return to their baptismal names.

1969   - Help Other People Excel, Inc. (HOPE, Inc) is initiated to aid adults with physical and mental disabilities. Ministry among the Pima Indians in Mesa, Arizona begins.

1970   - Sr Betty Jean Goebel is elected general coordinator.  Summer Theology Workshops begin.

1971    - Sisters staff one school during this next decade and hold short term positions in various schools.  Sisters receive Community’s new Constitutions: “Attentive to the Lord.”

1972   - Grains of Wheat, a Community  newspaper, is created.

1973   - Sisters form House of Prayer, a group of itinerant preachers that provides preaching workshops throughout the United States.  Indigenous Nigerian sisters are incorporated as a civil entity.

1974   - Sr Betty Jean Goebel re-elected general coordinator. Peace and Justice Commission established.  Great Bend becomes first Dominican Congregation to have an Associate program. Friends United to Serve the Elderly (FUSE), a program to provide a noon meal for those over 60, begins.  Sisters purchase and develop a house in Ramah, CO, into a rehabilitation center for the homeless. First novitiate is received in Nigeria.

1975   - Contact, the Peace and Justice Commission’s monthly newsletter, begins. Sisters begin Christian Leadership Experience (CLE), a weekend to help teenage girls become familiar with the Dominicans and increase knowledge of Christianity.

1976  - Two week Dominican conference, open to all US Dominicans is held.

1977    - Sisters celebrate 75th anniversary of the Community. Sisters begin work with Las Casas, a ministry with the Cheyenne and Arapaho in Oklahoma.

1978   - Sr Louise Hageman becomes president.

1979   - Golden Belt Home Health Program is established.

1980  - Ground is broken for Cedar Park Place, a 63-unit housing complex for the elderly and handicapped.  Sisters participate in Catholic Relief Services, ministering to refugees and residents of countries in crisis.

1981   - Sisters staff two schools during this next decade.  Cedar Park Place opens. Sr Louise Hageman is re-elected. “Year of the Martyrs,” a Peace and Justice event, is inaugurated.  Five women and one priest are officially received as Associates of the Dominican Sisters.

1982   - Peace Ribbon project is started. Chapel is remodeled and named “The Dominican Chapel of the Plains.”

1985   - Motherhouse remodeling project is completed. All former members are invited for Re-Member-ing.  Three hospitals, Central Kansas Medical Center, St Joseph Memorial and St Catherine, join seven other religious congregations in partnership with Catholic Health Corporation of Omaha in order to provide better service and use of resources.  New Community logo is adopted.

1986   - Sr Rene Weeks elected prioress.

1987   - Heartland Farm is purchased.

1988  - Heartland Center for Wholistic

                 Health opens. Central Kansas

                 Medical Center and St Joseph

                 Hospital merge as single

                 administrative unit.

                 Community  joins 16 US

                 Dominican congregations to

                 found a Common Dominican

                 Novitiate.

1992   - Community celebrates its 90th year.

1996   - Original motherhouse demolition begins.

1997   - Central Kansas Medical Center is incorporated into Catholic Health Initiatives.

1998   - Sr Gemma Doll becomes Prioress. Nigerian Community celebrates 25 years. Plans begin for Partners in Mission, a program that provides an alternative form of membership. “Hearts Ablaze in Jubilee” is proclaimed as the opening of a four-year preparation for the Community’s centennial celebration. Community joins emerging Dominican Alliance, a group of US congregations seeking closer collaboration. Community begins Centennial Walk from Great Bend to Caleruega, Spain, and back.

1999   - Community takes corporate stance against the death penalty. Dominican Associates celebrate 25 years.  Srs Teri Wall and Francine Schwarzenberger, and Larry Hesed represent the Community at a prayer vigil at School of the Americas Non-Violent Vigil for martyrs of Central and South America. Community plants Peace Pole in the front lawn of the motherhouse.

2000  - Community receives first Partner in Mission. First General Assembly of the Dominican Family is held in Manila, Philippines; associates Fred and Ginger Kroos represent the Great Bend Dominicans and North America at the assembly. Community adopts a corporate stance of kinship with and reverence for Earth.

2001  - Sr Gemma Doll is selected as representative for North America at the Dominican Sisters International conference in Caleruega, Spain, and serves on the coordinating council for Dominican Sisters International. Sr Rene Weeks visits Dominicans in Iraq to witness effects of sanctions.

2002 - Community celebrates 100 years on the Plains.

I.  From Brooklyn to Great Bend

On April 16, 1902, nine pioneers from Brooklyn, New York, left for Kansas.  They brought little more than faith with them as they traveled west to a place they had only read about through correspondence with Father Werner Emmerich, a pastor in Ellinwood, Kansas.  It was Mother Antonina Fischer’s dream to become a missionary, and with her came Sisters Blanche Bachlechner, Antonina Gerhold, Cunigunda Trojan, Dalmatia Hellriegel, Diana Trojan, Florence Harrigan, and candidates Agnes Silberhorn and Mary Papsum.

The seven pioneer sisters.

The pioneers were to settle in Wichita; Bishop J. J. Hennessey had planned for his home to become their convent.  But he gave his home to the Precious Blood Sisters from Ruma, Illinois, and bought a college building, Central Normal College in Great Bend, which was soon to be vacant.  This was to become the home for the sisters from Brooklyn.

From the beginning the pioneers faced hardship.  When they arrived in Great Bend on April 23, they were unable to move into their new home; the college would not be vacant until June.  From April 24 to June 9, they lived in the abandoned Morrison Hotel.  When they moved into the college on June 9, they found the three-story building in poor condition. After months of labor and thousands of dollars spent cleaning and repairing, the convent was dedicated in November 1902.

Almost immediately after arriving in Great Bend, the sisters were asked to open a hospital.  But they had begun teaching in parochial schools as soon as they arrived in Kansas, and were busy trying to open St Mary Academy, a school for boys under age 15 and girls under 18.  Furthermore, none of the sisters were registered nurses.  Mother Antonina wrote to Brooklyn requesting a registered nurse.  In 1903 Sister Loretta Feinler came to Great Bend from Brooklyn to open St Rose Hospital.

The young Community continued to struggle: the sisters were overworked and had little food.  Some of the sisters complained to the bishop, and many requested permission to leave the Great Bend Community.  In 1910, after much struggle and pressure from the bishop and the local priest, Mother Antonina resigned.  Mother Antonina was replaced as major superior by Sister Seraphine Weisenberg, who was still in temporary vows.

With the resignation and replacement of Mother Antonina came yet another dilemma, loss of members.  There was confusion as to whom the sisters should be loyal.  Some of the sisters wished to leave the Community altogether, while others requested permission to rejoin the Brooklyn Community.  A few wanted to travel on with Mother Antonina.  She and three sisters, Sister Antonina Gerhold, Sister Cunigunda Trojan, and Sister Geraldine Mueller, left the Great Bend Community in search of ministry elsewhere.  A decade of beginnings ended in uncertainty.

III.  Gaining Independence

The old college building, built in 1888, which had served as the motherhouse since the sisters’ arrival in 1902, was overcrowded and in constant need of repair.  The sisters wanted a new motherhouse.  In 1929 the Community had its first bazaar to raise money for the building of a new home.

The Community worked to establish independence from the Brooklyn Community by writing a new rule book.  Until that point the sisters had used the Rule and Constitutions of the Brooklyn Community.

In 1924, the Community was officially affiliated with the Order of Friars Preachers.  A dream was realized; the Community was now part of the Dominican Order.

IV.  Planning, Praying & Saving

Times were difficult during this dry, dirty Depression era.  Many were without jobs, and many of the parishes in which the sisters worked could not afford to pay the sisters.

The need for a new motherhouse never ceased.  Bishop Schwertner said they could begin building a new home only if they could raise $100,000.  This did not deter the sisters; they continued working toward a seemingly impossible goal.  Despite the bleak economic situation, the sisters received donations from friends, relatives and acquaintances.  Some of the patients who owed money at St Rose Hospital tried to pay back their debts.  The sisters made sacrifices whenever possible to save the money.  Their sacrifices were rewarded when ground was broken for the new 250-room motherhouse on June 26, 1940.

II.  Hardships

At the time of Mother Seraphine’s appointment as major superior, there were 42 members in the Community.  Membership quickly fell to 18.  Turbulence, illness and financial problems plagued the young community during this decade.

The Psalms of St Joseph were prayed every week for relief of financial burdens.  In 1913, when the sisters were able to pay the mortgage, a statue of St Joseph was placed in front of the motherhouse.

Sad news came in January 1920; the sisters received word that Mother Antonina, foundress of the Community, had died January 15, 1920, in Mission San Jose, California.

V.  A New Home

On October 7, 1941, after 18 months of construction, the new, spacious, brick convent building was ready for dedication.

Among the many conveniences, the new building contained private rooms, a large chapel, an elevator, a dumb-waiter, walk-in refrigerators, a bakery, a sewing room, an infirmary, an auditorium and a community room.

The new motherhouse was dedicated  on October 7, 1941

“My chief reason for making a new foundation in Kansas is to instruct the poor children in the Catholic religion, and to have our great Order of Saint Dominic spread . . . Not only to become saints, but also to be with God’s grace the instrument to have others join the flock of our Divine Spouse

and become saintly

daughters of our great

Saint Dominic.”

Mother Antonina Fischer

 

“When I was called the first morning to come down to the chapel for Mass, I said to Sister, ‘Good morning, Sister.’  She said, ‘Good morning, Sister.’  And that was fine.  I got dressed, came down the stairs, and met another sister.  ‘Good morning, Sister.’  She walked on.  I met a third sister and said, ‘Good morning, Sister,’ and no response.  I learned then that breaking silence was a fault.  I had broken profound silence.”

Sr. Theodosia Tockert OP

 

“It is so much different now than when I entered the convent in 1921.  It is incomprehensible, the differences.  We used to depend, maybe too much, on superiors and officers.  Now we are more on

our own.”

Sr Henrietta Schneweis OP

 

“1929 was one of our community’s history-making years.  Our first bazaar was held on August 20 of that year.  The many long tables on the lawn south of the old convent displayed a variety of handmade items — embroidered dresser scarves, pillow cases and much more.  The successful bazaar netted $2000 for the building of a new motherhouse.  After ten more years of saving, the new motherhouse was under construction after someone advised, ‘start to build and the money will come.’  This was sound advice since the materials were purchased just before World War II.  Later, purchasing would have been more difficult.”

Sr Frances Marie Heitz OP

 

“During the Dirty Thirties, the dust storms were so bad that we had to join hands and

hang on to walk back

to the convent.”

Sr Rosalia Govert OP

 

“I was fifteen when I entered the convent in 1932.  My mother had taught me how to bake bread.  I baked some for the sisters, and they liked it so much they made me the bread baker.  I would have to bake sometimes fifteen loaves at a time.  We didn’t have a mixer, so I had to mix it all by hand.