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60 Years: Mary Kathleen Cummings, SP
(Sister Katrina)
Sister Mary K. Cummings is delighted to be a part-time volunteer in the religious community’s library in Spokane. As a college student, she had wanted to become librarian, but with no nearby library school she took general subjects instead. She finally has her opportunity, thanks to the enhancement of the Sisters of Providence library system a few years ago.
 Sister Mary K. lives just a short stroll from her birthplace in 1931 at the then Sacred Heart Hospital. Her family moved to Spokane from Northport, Wash., near the Canadian border, when she was 10. She has always known sisters, having been taught by the Sisters of the Holy Names in grade school and by the Franciscan sisters at Marycliff High School, and one of her aunts was Sister Frances Maureen, SP. While at Holy Names College, a local priest said he thought she had a vocation.
Knowing that she did not want to teach, Sister Mary K. was drawn to the possibility of other ministries with the Sisters of Providence. But after making first vows in 1952, she found herself at the front of an elementary school classroom. She taught fifth through eighth grades for eight years, in Missoula, Mont., Wallace and DeSmet, Idaho, and Great Falls, Mont.
“As a teacher, I was young, inexperienced and unprepared,” she recalled, “but I liked the variety and being with the children.”
Called to serve in many ministries
Other ministries have been in finance at the then College of Great Falls, teaching high school, as treasurer of the former St. Ignatius Province, in parish ministry in Hayward, Calif., and nine years as director of pastoral care and of volunteers at a small rural hospital in Polson, Mont., while also serving as a part-time provincial council member. The latter required a regular commute between Polson and Spokane. After retiring 10 years ago, she assisted the elderly at Mount St. Joseph and Emilie Court, Spokane.
Through the years, she took courses at seven universities and colleges, including Notre Dame and the University of California at Berkeley. Sister Mary K. later earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of Great Falls and an MBA at Gonzaga University, Spokane.
“Over 60 years I’ve done a little bit of everything, but with no depth in anything.” She recalled with special fondness a single winter spent in DeSmet, where the simplicity of the life and of the people caught this country girl’s heart.
Sister Mary K. greets this Jubilee year “with a great deal of joy and gratitude to God for calling me to this way of life and introducing me to being of service.” And she is glad for the period of religious life in which she has lived, pre- and post-Vatican II. “It has sometimes been a difficult time, but I’ve made it. I wouldn’t have without the love and support of the community.”
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