Acts of Mercy
Wherever two or more Sisters of Mercy are gathered in His name, impressive and wondrous things tend to happen.
Hospitals and schools open. Think Mercy Hospital and its former nursing school in Charlotte, Sacred Heart College in Belmont and parochial schools such as St. Patrick in Charlotte, Sacred Heart in Salisbury, and St. Mary in Wilmington.
Innovative programs for children and adults with disabilities are established at Holy Angels in Belmont. The hungry are fed, the sick are healed, and souls are guided in communities across North Carolina – and the United States.
Founded in Ireland, the order arrived stateside in 1843. North Carolinians have been graced with Sisters of Mercy since their arrival from Charleston, S.C., in 1862 to provide aid during the Yellow Fever epidemic in Wilmington. Among all their sacrifices, merciful acts and accomplishments, perhaps the biggest impact the sisters have made during the past 150-plus years has been in the hearts and minds of the people to whom they’ve ministered.
One North Carolina community that’s particularly blessed with the sisters’ presence is Davie County. For more than 20 years, Sister Susie Dandison and Sister Martha Hoyle have been a godsend not only to St. Francis of Assisi Church in Mocksville but also to the wider population because of their hard work, compassion and entire gift of themselves.
Showing Mercy in Mocksville
Supported by the order, which is based in Belmont, the sisters volunteer at A Storehouse for Jesus, a Christian ministry in Mocksville offering goods and services to the poor ranging from food, clothes and haircuts to free medical clinics on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well as a monthly women’s health clinic. The entire operation is funded by grants and donations and run by more than 400 volunteers, which include doctors, nurses, pharmacists, optometrists, chiropractors and psychiatrists.
Sister Susie is a Spanish-English translator beloved and trusted by the county’s large Hispanic population. She has volunteered at the storehouse, tutored students at area schools and is a translator at the health department.
“Sister Susie knows the Hispanic community very well and cares for them very deeply,” says Father Eric Kowalski, pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish. Sister Martha adds with a smile, “She’s the more popular sister,” then continues, “She’s a true ‘madre,’ in a strong, affirming sense. The Hispanic people – they trust her. She’s the one.”
Those who meet Sister Susie for the first time are often awestruck by her abilities, wondering how “this little old white lady” speaks Spanish so fluently. The answer is simple. “I was born in Argentina,” Sister Susie says.
Besides filling basic needs for daily living, A Storehouse for Jesus helps fill the gap for people who don’t qualify for care at the health department. Sister Martha, a registered nurse who also has a degree in education, helps run the medical clinic.
One of her patients, Kathleen Holbrook, has been a client at the storehouse for the past four years. “Sister Martha is great. She ought to be president. She would get the job done as far as our health system. You couldn’t come to a better place when you’re in need,” Holbrook says, waiting patiently as Sister Martha stays on the phone helping ensure Holbrook doesn’t lose her Medicaid benefits.
“With someone who has been as sick as Kathleen has been, you get all this information thrown at you or you get denied. It’s overwhelming, and it’s easy to pull back,” Sister Martha explains.
That’s when you want this Sister of Mercy on your side.
“She is very vigilant with her patients here. She leaves no stone unturned,” Holbrook says.
As an ombudsman, Sister Martha also advocates for the elderly, helping keep area nursing homes in check.
Sisters of Mercy at St. Francis
Sister Susie and Sister Martha aren’t the first Sisters of Mercy at the Mocksville parish. Sister Bernadette McNamara, Sister Anita Sherrin and Sister Carmelita Hagan served the parish in various capacities in the 1980s and ’90s. Today, Sister Susie helps with baptism and marriage preparation and Sister Martha with the music ministry. Both sisters are there for anyone in the parish who may need help.
“Sister Susie is a good soul and someone to lean on. She supported me when my son died. She can really empathize. She’s stern and can put you in your place, but in a gentle way that’s for your own good. She’s put me in my place, and she’s had to. That’s what I like about her. What you see is what you get,” says Joan Church, a St. Francis parishioner since 1993 who has volunteered at A Storehouse for Jesus as well. “When Sister Martha went to fight for me with Social Services, that was above and beyond. It’s really a treat to have the nuns here. You feel like they’re there with you. They’re not just nuns; they’re sisters to me.”
When Father Kowalski, who has been a priest for 25 years, became pastor in Mocksville last year, he wasn’t sure what to expect. “I hadn’t been at a parish with religious sisters, and I wondered what I was getting into. Both have made me feel very welcome,” he says. “Sister Susie is dynamic and quite a fireball, while Sister Martha is the more quiet of the two. They both have a wonderful sense of humor and are not above teasing me. They’ve helped me learn who different people are, and they always anticipate ways they can help at the parish.”
The two have their own apartments in the same building in Mocksville and have an older-younger sister dynamic to their relationship. “There’s a genuine care for each other that’s really very beautiful to see,” notes Father Kowalski.
“Having come from a very busy existence prior to coming to Mocksville, you get used to having a full schedule. They’ve taught me it’s OK to slow down,” he says. “The sisters have come with me to anointing of the sick, and helped me to see that I can spend more time with the families. They’ve helped me relearn that, and I’m very thankful to them. They’ve been a tremendous blessing to me, the parish and Mocksville.”
In 2000, Sister Susie was instrumental in starting a Spanish Mass at St. Francis, which began as a mission in 1958 and became a parish in 1980. Insisting that the Mass be celebrated weekly to better serve the Hispanic community, Sister Susie proceeded to teach then-pastor Father Andrew Draper, a Franciscan, to say the Mass in Spanish.
Spanish Mass attendance began with 10 people, then grew and grew until now people fill the pews nearly every Sunday. Father John Starczewski then became pastor, and as a fluent Spanish speaker, the Hispanic ministry continued to flourish under his leadership and does so to this day with Father Kowalski, who also speaks the language. Both sisters say that St. Francis is becoming more of a united parish family as Spanish- and English-speaking parishioners come together for worship and social occasions.
Sister Susie’s Double Vocation
Before she was called to religious life, Sister Susie – born Susie Canade in 1932 – married John Malcolm Dandison in her native Argentina. The couple had their daughter Cris in Buenos Aires, moved to England, had another child, and then ended up in the United States and had two more children. “We had too much baggage to keep traveling, so we stayed,” she says. The family moved to Salisbury in 1955. The Dandison children attended Sacred Heart School, which was founded by the Sisters of Mercy as Salisbury Catholic School in 1910 after they purchased land to build it, improving upon the rectory-based school that opened at the parish in 1882.
In 1971, her husband died suddenly of a heart attack. Now a widow with four children, Sister Susie went on a retreat for Catholics experiencing similar circumstances. She was invited to come back for peer-to-peer counseling. On a walk one day with Sister Pauline Clifford during a Cursillo retreat in 1974, she thought about a religious vocation for the first time.
“I told her, ‘I think I have a religious vocation.’ She said don’t give up and keep praying but also that they don’t take children. I still had two kids at home. I talked to everyone under the sun. I’d go to confession and (the priest would) say, ‘Ask God to let you know.’”
“Mercy Sister Jean Margaret visited Salisbury for an anniversary in the early 1980s when I was 51,” Sister Susie recalls. The two spoke over hors d’oeuvres. Sister Susie told the Mercy sister that she felt called by God to religious life. Sister Jean Margaret invited her to come visit her and talk further.
“I was always very comfortable with the Sisters of Mercy since they ran the school my children attended in Salisbury,” Sister Susie recalls. “When it would snow, the sisters would invite the kids in for hot chocolate.”
She and her family lived across the street from Sacred Heart School when the children were in elementary school. They all have fond memories of the Sisters of Mercy – especially their hospitality and the joy they exuded.
“Our playground was the school playground,” recalls Sister Susie’s daughter, Cris Dandison Brincefield. “I remember during the snow, the sisters coming out to have snowball fights with us. I took piano lessons in the convent and was very comfortable being in the home of the sisters.”
The Sisters of Mercy have been a thread throughout Brincefield’s life. She later attended the order’s Sacred Heart College in Belmont where many of the sisters she knew in her younger years were on campus. Brincefield said she wasn’t surprised when her mother joined the Sisters of Mercy, noting Sister Susie’s compassion and ability to comfort others in her roles as hospital chaplain of Mercy Hospital South in Pineville and with the Hispanic community in Mocksville.
So at the age of 52, Sister Susie entered the convent, on Mercy Day, Sept. 24, 1984. Her daughter, son-in-law and their children came with her for the Mass.
She recalls, “In those days, the bishop and all the priests came to Mass at the convent in the big chapel that we have. I thought, ‘Is all this for me?’ No, of course not – it was for the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy, but I didn’t know that! I’d never been there for it.”
The change in lifestyle was a major thing to consider, and Sister Susie continued working at Ingersoll Rand for a couple years to keep her pension in case her religious discernment didn’t go as she expected.
Sister Martha is grateful that nothing deterred Sister Susie. “It would have been a great loss had she not joined us.”
“I knew it. I saw it written,” Sister Susie says of her vocation. “That’s what I wanted, so my answer to the Lord was, ‘Is there anything else I can do?’ And I’ve never had any regrets.”
Sister Susie’s advice to anyone considering a religious vocation: “If you’re thinking about it, don’t just give up. Pray about it, first of all; then talk to someone who can give you insights. If you don’t, 20 years later you may look back and wish you had done it. I never would have known what I missed.”
Sister Martha’s Call Within a Call
Growing up in nearby Cooleemee, Sister Martha and her family were members of the Methodist Church. Her sister Ruth, who is still very involved as a Methodist, volunteers with Sister Martha at the storehouse in Mocksville.
But Sister Martha felt called to convert to the Catholic faith in the late 1960s. “I was a student at Mercy at the time,” Sister Martha remembers. “It was a call, with no coercion at all, to become Catholic.
“I experienced two distinct calls,” she says her conversion to the faith and then becoming a religious sister. “As a senior in high school, I’d sneak in and out of Mass at Sacred Heart in Salisbury.”
Her call to become a religious sister happened on a retreat with two sisters to Goldsboro. “A light went off and I said, ‘Hey, maybe I want to be a sister.’ I started the process right after that and was accepted.”
Yet she had doubts just before she was about to enter religious life. Her spiritual director, Father William Stall, surprised Sister Martha when he told her, “Thank God you didn’t enter.”
“He said I wasn’t ready, and that if I entered with doubt, I wouldn’t stay,” Sister Martha recalls. “I worked for two years, but God was nagging. I needed to stop thinking and do it.”
Sister Martha earned a nursing degree from Mercy School of Nursing and entered the convent in 1972. She later worked at Mercy House with people who had AIDS. She was also instrumental in starting the first nursing ministry at Mercy House.
“One sister was in a nursing home, and the care was so awful. I agreed to set up the nursing facility at the convent, so they wouldn’t have to leave their environment,” she explains. “What’s there now is unbelievable. It’s a whole new facility, and it’s second to none.”
Recalling her preparation at the convent, Sister Martha says, “It’s not an automatic sisterhood dealing with a large group of women. There are people you wonder about and people you’re in total awe of, and that humbles you. There was this humble awe, and you start to realize the wideness of God’s plan. It’s not just the ‘me’ part of it. I sometimes had doubts of what’s going on, but not the vocation. I had Father Stall’s encouragement at every step. I was so much stronger the second time. I didn’t understand why at the time. There’s always a grace point, and looking back is the only way to learn from everything.”
Sister Martha says she felt sure she was being called specifically to the Belmont order. “I had looked at other communities. It wasn’t the location; it was the spirit and charism of the Sisters of Mercy,” she explains. “We’re more of an active order. We’re apostolic. We walk to reach the people.”
Surely, Jesus is there in their midst.
— Annie Ferguson, Correspondent
