It was only on the occasion of the newly inaugurated annual S.V.O. reunions, the seven years following the centennial celebration of the dedication of the chapel at St.Vincent's, the summer of 1985, that I got a fuller grasp of Sister Euphemia's personality.

She had the simple unaffected candor of a child. She got along beautifully with children. A dedicated teacher, she even continued going to schools and tutoring children into her eighties, until she was advised by her superiors to discontinue.

I last saw Sister Euphemia in December 1992 at the infirmary of St. Mary Of The Springs, Columbus, Ohio, where she was recuperating from a fall. It was with great pleasure that I gave her a large picture of the S.V.O. boys' playground in a twelve by fifteen inch frame together with about twenty large scenes of St. Vincent's and St. Ann's. She was hushed as she looked at the pictures. The buildings depicted in these scenes, except for the chapel, had been gone for years. They were razed in 1956, thirty-seven years previously.

Then, turning toward me, she asked, "You mean I can keep these?"

I replied, "Why of course."

Then picking up the framed picture of the playground, she asked, "But didn't this cost you a lot of money?"

“Not really," I replied.

"I loved St. Vincent's. I spent the best years of my life there," she quickly remarked. Then looking more intently at the playground scene, she commented, "There was a grove. It was such a pleasant spot."

"I couldn't get it in the overall shot, except for a mulberry tree at its edge, there at the far left," I responded.

When I was ready to leave St. Mary's Infirmary, I was standing with my back to the elevator doors, still conversing. Sister Euphemia was also standing and looking fixedly at me. Suddenly, she rushed toward me, flung her arms around me, and gave me a warm embrace. It seemed that she realized this was our final earthly contact.

As we left each other's company, she whispered softly, "Pray for me."

I nodded, "I will."

About a month later, in late January 1993, Sister Euphemia suffered another fall in which she broke her hip. In failing health, Sister Euphemia spent her final days in the infirmary of the motherhouse of her Franciscan order at Stella Niagara, New York. She died there two years later in 1995. For me, her passing marked the slipping away into eternity of the last remnant of the sisters of old St. Vincent's of the twenties, thirties, and forties.

A group of alumni pose in front of the S.V.O. Chapel at a reunion in September 1986. Sr. Euphemia, totally identifying with the alumni, poses with them in the middle of the front row. I am in the first row, the fourth from the left.