150 years of Notre Dame nuns

The kindergartners were fidgety but quiet last week as they entered the chapel at Cathedral Grade School in Belleville for a quick tutorial on the rituals of Catholic Mass.

Sister Theresa Markus showed them how to dip two fingers in bowl of holy water, make the sign of the cross and kneel down to genuflect before taking their seats.

"This light tells us Jesus is in the tabernacle," said Markus, pointing to a floor lamp with a red shade next to the altar. "It's called a sanctuary lamp."

Markus, 61, better known as "Sister Tess," is director of religious education for St. Peter's Parish and the only nun still working at Cathedral.

Much has changed since the mid-1900s, when her order, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, held all teaching and administrative positions and wore full habits.

"Those nuns were wonderful people," said former student Agnes Richter, 88, of Belleville. "They taught you nothing but respect, pride and decency."

Richter was sitting in the rectory conference room last week, reminiscing with four other alumnae of Cathedral and the old Academy of Notre Dame High School for girls.

She boarded at the academy for a year in the late '30s and worked for her tuition. One of her duties was ironing habits and starching veil-like headpieces known as wimples.

Former student Bernice Gaskill, 86, of Belleville, remembers the Cathedral bell ringing for lunch and dismissal and hearing music over a loudspeaker.

"Everyone had to line up with their partners, and they'd put a Victrola record on -- I think it was John Philip Sousa's march -- and we all had to march in unison," she said.

The School Sisters are celebrating their 150th anniversary with St. Peter's Parish and the Catholic Diocese of Belleville today. A reception will follow the 10:30 a.m. Mass and a special liturgy.

"They have been teachers of the generations," said the Rev. John Myler, parish rector, who studied under the nuns at Holy Angels Parish in East St. Louis.

Myler gives them at least partial credit for his decision to become a priest. He insists stories about their meanness or cruelty are "urban legends."

But the nuns were strict disciplinarians who demanded students behave in school and refused to pass them to the next grade level unless they earned it.

"If they told you to be quiet, then you had better be quiet or you would get into trouble," said former student Cathy Becker, 72, of Belleville. "You'd have to stay after school or write something or stand in the corner."

Sue Fizer, 74, of Belleville, recalls that Sister Constance Dollus, an eighth-grade teacher and principal in the '40s, "put up with no nonsense" and kept an eye on students from a desk on a six-inch-high riser.

The alumni also told of students taking private music lessons and eating peanut coffee cake for breakfast on the first Friday of each month.

"(The nuns) gave me the education I needed for my future years," said former student Teresa Gauch, 78, of Belleville. "They taught me dedication and thoughtfulness and kindness. You put them all in one basket, and it comes out pretty good."

Sister Caroline Gerhardinger founded the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Bavaria in 1833. She saw education as key to dealing with hunger, illiteracy and other societal problems.

Sister Caroline Friess expanded the order to the United States in 1847. Nuns opened Immaculate Conception Academy -- later renamed Cathedral Grade School -- in 1859.

"The importance of the sisters here at Cathedral is reflective of the importance of women religious throughout the country, especially in terms of immigration," Myler said.

"They taught English to little German children who spoke German at home. In other parts of the country, they taught Italian children and Polish children, and the children went home and taught their parents."

Sister Mary Jerome Heil served as Cathedral superioress until 1884, when she died in a school fire along with 22 children and three other nuns.

"I remember my father talking about the fire," Gaskill said. "They were farmers, and they brought their equipment in to haul away the debris."

Perhaps the most legendary teacher at Cathedral was Sister Pacifica Funke, who founded the kindergarten in 1913 and ran it for 58 years.

She taught about 60 students in the morning and 60 in the afternoon with help from parents.

"The kindergartners were on the fourth floor," Fizer said, noting their playground was a screened-in porch. "Those poor little things had to climb all the way to the top."

St. Peter's built the current Cathedral Grade School in 1957. The parish later sold the original building, which was demolished to make room for St. Elizabeth's Hospital's emergency room.

Markus taught at Cathedral in the early '70s, when the staff included 17 nuns for about 1,200 students. She later served other parishes before returning to Belleville 20 years ago.

Markus became a nun partly because she admired her twin sisters, who were 10 years older and had answered the call to become School Sisters.

"When they would come home for visits (in Aviston), they would always wear their habits," she said. "And they'd say, 'Do you want to see us without our habits?' And they would show us their hair.

"So I grew up with nuns. I had them in grade school and high school, and I always found them to be so personable. They always treated you like an individual."

Markus is one of three nuns who live in the St. Peter's convent today. Sister Ann Marie Bonvie is director of Notre Dame Preschool in South St. Louis, and Sister Barbara Haas is a bookkeeper for Sisters of the Good Shepherd in St. Louis.