Sister Marie Amada Garcia, OP 1919-2018 The first postulant to enter the Adrian Dominicans from Albuquerque, New Mexico, came in the person of 18-year-old Marie Concepta Garcia. Born August 15, 1919, Marie Concepta was the daughter of Edwardo and Ramoncita Luna Apodaca. Edwardo died before Marie was born, a victim of the flu epidemic that swept around the world during that time. Ramoncita remarried when Marie was about two years old, and her new husband, Charles Garcia, adopted the little girl. In all, four children came into the Garcia family, including a brother, William, and two sisters,

Marceline (Lena) and Rita. Ramoncita worked as a schoolteacher and Charles as an inspector for the Santa Fe Railroad. “Lita,” as Marie was called by the family, attended Sacred Heart School and then St. Vincent Academy, where she was educated by the Sisters of Charity. The Adrian Dominican Sisters began staffing Sacred Heart School in 1933, and although Marie had already completed her elementary schooling earlier that year, she nevertheless became acquainted with the sisters at Sacred Heart because the convent was near her home and she often stopped there to visit on her way home from high school. According to her life story,

She came to know the Adrian Dominicans as especially cheerful and down to earth. More and more she wanted to be in their company, so she began helping them prepare their classrooms as well as assisting with any other small jobs they might have. … During those years, her mother also came to know the Dominicans quite well since she would volunteer to drive them to the store or to other appointments they had. It was not a big surprise to her parents then when Lita asked for [their] permission to enter the Adrian Congregation.

At the time, she was working as a stenographer for a title and abstract company. She arrived in Adrian on July 25, 1938, and was received into the novitiate on April 26, 1939, at which time she was given her religious name, Sister Marie Amada, in honor of her maternal grandmother, who had cared for the children when they were not in school and in the process had taught them Spanish. After making profession in 1940, she spent the next forty-five years in education, teaching elementary or high school in Chicago; Winslow, Arizona; Tucumcari, New Mexico; Des Moines, Iowa; Joliet, Illinois; Detroit; Albuquerque; Oakland, California; Santa Cruz, California; and Las Vegas, Nevada; and working as an instructor at Clark County Community College in Las Vegas. In all, she spent more than thirty years in Las Vegas, most of it as a teacher. Over time, she earned her bachelor’s degree in Latin, with minors in history, English, and Spanish, from Siena Heights College (University), and her master’s from the University of Detroit. Her life story contains a humorous anecdote about her time at the community college, where she taught English and Spanish at two different campuses that were not near each other, necessitating

hurried trips from one place to the next. One of her students, a police officer, told her he might need to give her a ticket, and “with her wonderful sense of humor … she chided him right back with ‘Then I may not be able to give you a passing grade!’” A whole new career field came Sister Marie Amada’s way when she became an immigration counselor with Catholic Charities in Las Vegas. She had been spending her free summer months working as a translator for Catholic Charities’ immigration services. In 1984, she became accredited to represent clients in immigration proceedings and began working at the Las Vegas United Way’s Outreach Information Clinic. She went to work with Catholic Charities full-time the next year. Her job entailed assisting applicants with asylum or legal permanent residency claims, helping those who wanted family members to be allowed residency in the United States, and being an advocate at deportation hearings. When she moved from Las Vegas to Henderson, Nevada, in 2001, she began volunteering at St. Rose Dominican Hospitals, providing Spanish-translation services, as well as with the hospital’s Positive Impact Program, which provided reading tutors to local schoolchildren. As her health failed, she moved to an assisted living facility in Henderson and then, in 2009, returned to Adrian to live at the Dominican Life Center. She died on April 10, 2018, at the age of ninety-eight. Sister Molly Nicholson, in her homily at the memorial Mass held April 13, remembered Sister Marie Amada’s “quiet, content presence, wherever she was.” “As a young sister, she quickly grew to be at home with young teenagers,” Sister Molly said, “… drawing close to their stories and offering the many gifts within her for their growth, healing, reconciliation or education. I believe that deep within herself she heard and carried the message of God the Father to his son: you are precious and honored and I love each of you.” Sister Molly went on to recall how Sister Marie Amada served immigrants and those to whom she ministered at St. Rose Hospitals, listening to their needs and being present to them: “Sister Amada, in her quiet, determined manner, always lonesome for her own family in New Mexico, experienced the emptiness of others and sought to fill it with her generous presence and her healing, comforting smile as she listened.”

Left: Sisters serving at Queen of Heaven in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1961 were, back row, from left: Sisters Marie Amada Garcia, James Philip (Mary) Carey, Marie Assumpta (Mildred Ann) Huber, and Mary Benignus (Ellen Mary) Ach; and front row, from left, Sisters Ann Philip Cotta, Marie McGowan, Matthew Mary Foley, and Dorothy Marie Beers.

Left: From left, Sister Marie Amada Garcia, Michelle DeCarie, and Sister Leon Grace Faulhaber stand in front of St. Louis Bertrand Church, Oakland, California.

Left: Sisters Marie Amada Garcia (left) and Ruth Kennedy celebrate their Diamond Jubilee in 1999.

Left: Left to right, Sisters Nelda Ann Klein, Bernice Nofs, Eleanor Stech, Marie Amada Garcia, and Anne Baxter

Left: Sister Marie Amada Garcia (third row, furthest back, right) poses with the Sisters she taught American Literature in the summer of 1963.

Members of the Double Diamond Jubilee Class of 2009 are: back row, from left, Sisters Dorothy Jeanne Burns, Mary Margaret Beh, Maura Phillips, Attracta Kelly (Prioress), and Virginia Marie LaTourelle, and front row, from left, Sisters Marie Amada Garcia, Irma Gerber, Marie Bride Walsh, and Helen Patrick Bartley.