Their lives have been
inextricably linked since 1909, when she arrived in New Orleans among the
precious cargo of 60 babies and young children on an "orphan train”
from New York.
Sarah Hunt, age 2, was
wearing a white dress and bonnet as the specially equipped New York
Central car pulled into Union Station on April 29, 1909. Administrators
of the New York Foundling Asylum had pinned tag No. 59 on her dress,
describing what was known of her family history-- Her mother had died in
childbirth and her father had walked away, never having been heard from
again-- and identifying the family in south Louisiana that was supposed
to adopt her. On the
platform that day was Peter J. Fabacher, whose wife Josephine already was
the mother of eight children and was seven months pregnant with their
ninth child, a boy they would name Ignatius after a Jesuit saint.
Fabacher
was greeting the train with his nephew, John Frey of Crowley, who had
asked the New York orphanage for a 5-year-old boy that he hoped would
become the heir to his rice plantation. As Frey searched the platform for
the boy, someone thrust little Sarah into Fabacher's arms. It was only then that Fabacher
noticed the tag on her dress. Sarah-- and not a 5-year-old boy-- had been
ticketed for the Frey family.
As the story goes,
Frey was extremely disappointed. He could not imagine what his wife would
do with a baby girl, and he wanted to send Sarah back on the train to New
York. But as Sarah draped her arms around Fabacher's neck, the restaurant
owner took the plunge. "The more the merrier," he said,
agreeing to take her into his uptown home.
God wrote the rest of
the story.
Eighteen years later,
Sarah entered the Dominican convent, one year before Ignatius joined the Jesuits at Grand
Coteau. Two other siblings, Henrietta and Marie, joined the Ursulines and
the Little Sisters of the Poor, giving the family four religious
vocations among its 14 children. Henrietta and Marie are deceased.
But last week, Sarah
Hunt (Sister Mary James) Fabacher, who will turn 92 this month, and
Jesuit Father Ignatius Fabacher, who will be 90 in June, walked,
side-by-side with the aid of aluminum walkers into the chapel for Mass at
the Mary Joseph Residence for the Elderly.
There is an
unmistakable and touching bond between "big" sister, who this
year is celebrating the 70th year of her religious profession, and
"little" brother. Father Fabacher lives at Mary Joseph and
celebrates Mass as an assistant chaplain. Sister Mary James resides at
the Dominican Motherhouse on Broadway. The two see each other once a
week.
"Have you been a
good girl?" Father Fabacher asked his sister as he planted a kiss on
her cheek. Seeing a photographer in the room, he told her, "You've
got to smile."
"Aw,
shucks," she said. "Is it almost time for Mass?"
Just a week earlier,
Father Fabacher had a mild heart attack, but he bounced back quickly.
"I'm getting old," he said, smiling. "When you get to be
89 you'll see what I mean. She's kind of deaf and I'm getting deaf
myself.
Father Fabacher has
gently suggested that his big sister use both of her hearing aids, but
sometimes she doesn't. So he communicates with her by writing out
questions on sheets of paper, which she reads and responds to.
"We talk about
old times," he said. "I do most of the writing."
In an interview she
videotaped a few years ago, Sister Mary James recalled growing up in the
big Fabacher house on Broadway Street across from the Dominican
Motherhouse.
"Papa went after everything big, big," she said.
"Mama used to tease him, 'You got a big family, a. big business, a
big house.' Everything was big."
As an adopted child,
Sister Mary James said her mother eased her acceptance into the family by
teaching her older siblings to love her as one of their own. Her Aunt
Mamie was a Dominican sister, and Sarah often could be found visiting her
and the other the nuns across the street.
"I'd come over
and the nuns would make over me," she said. "They'd think I was
cute. I got to love the Sisters and I wanted to be a Sister. I dreamed
about it, but I didn't think it was possible for me because I was just a
little adopted child. But I realized it could be a dream come true."
Father Fabacher said
his parents recited the rosary every night with the entire family.
"It got humorous sometimes because we would say the rosary and my
mother would see the younger children falling asleep, but papa kept right
on going," Father Fabacher said. "He had a lot of
intentions."
In
her career as a teacher, Sister Mary James was revered for her feistiness
in caring for underprivileged children, said Dan Bent, her nephew. She
was assigned to teach in "the country" in Lizana, Mississippi,
and Cottonport, Louisiana, from 1957-66, and she could not believe the
level of poverty.
"She was always
somewhat of a maverick," Bent said. "There was some kind of
deal where the Dominican nuns went to Mississippi and would teach in the
public schools. The community was too poor to hire teachers. So she would
teach and, after hours, she would do religious education. But the
community was so poor the kids came to school with no shoes."
At first, Sister Mary
James thought her students were shoeless because it was still hot out.
But when the winter came and the kids still came without shoes, she
sprang into action.
"She went out to
the highway in her habit and hitchhiked to New Orleans," Bent said.
"She went to D.H. Holmes or Maison Blanche and told the secretary
she wanted to see the president. The secretary asked if she had an
appointment, and she said, 'No, honey, I don't need an appointment.' She
finally was able to tell the president how poor the kids were, and she
asked him to donate usable clothes. The man told her, 'I will fill any
truck you can get. 'Well, she had a brother in the trucking business and
he had an 18-wheeler. She drove back and delivered all those
clothes."
Bent also remembers
meeting a student at LSU who had grown up in Cottonport, and he asked if
he had known anything about Sister Mary James. "We knew her,
Dan," the student said. "My little brother is named after
her."
Although
she says she is full of pain, Sister Mary James always asks visitors to
give her a kiss when they leave. Asked about her 70 years as a Dominican
Sister, Sister Mary James said: "I love it. I always wanted to be
Sister, and now I'm a Sister. I was very happy."
