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70 Years: Maryann Benoit, S.P.
(Sister Valerie, 1941)
A kaleidoscopic review of my 88 years highlights outstanding people and events that contribute to a life lavishly blessed by God-Providence.
 Born in Yakima, Wash., to Frederick L. Benoit and Anna Kathryn Heiser as the tenth of twelve children who survived to adulthood, I had the richness of a happy home, challenging siblings, and solicitous care by older sisters and brothers and numerous close relatives, among them a Sister of Providence, several cousins in other communities of women religious, and a Dominican priest.
Early on, I learned with pride that my mother had been one of the first three high school graduates who had completed the classical program at St. Joseph Academy in Yakima. She often spoke lovingly of a Sister Edward John, a teacher whom she much admired and whom decades later I was delighted to have as a history teacher.
From first through twelfth grades at St. Joseph’s, I met a succession of Sisters of Providence and was edified by their apparent happiness, their proficiency in the classroom, and their selflessness. Their influence and the inspirational ministry of the Jesuits serving in our parish lent support to my consideration of joining the Providence community. Happily, my two best friends in the St. Joseph’s Academy class of 1940 had the same idea, easing somewhat my departure from a happy home to enter the Seattle novitiate.
Counts many charismatic influences
Among charismatic influences in my life I gratefully include Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan, Ivan Illich, Pablo Freire and Brother Jerry Morris. I encountered these four during several richly blessed study sessions at Centro Intercultural de Documentacion in Cuernavaca, Mexico. At the University of Notre Dame, President Father Theodore Hesburgh and Professor Paul Fenlon modeled the incomparable spirit of that monument to Catholic education. Other valued educational opportunities included studies at the University of San Francisco, Gonzaga University and the University of Washington.
If space allowed, I could easily name dozens of my own community’s members as valued contributors to my seven decades of Providence-hallowed inspiration.
A first ministry assignment to teach third graders in Tacoma, Wash., began decades of enjoyable teaching on elementary and then secondary levels, followed by 19 years on the faculty of the then-College of Great Falls (MT). Invited to teach English twice in Japan and subsequently serving as advisor to numerous Japanese students at the college, I accepted invitations to five stays in Japan, two of them followed by samplings of China.
More recent highlights of providential blessings included presence at the beatification of our beloved foundress, Emilie Gamelin, and subsequent participation in the Great Falls diocese’s centennial celebration tour in 2003, a second experience of Rome. Still another memorable intercultural blessing was participation in the 150th anniversary celebration of the community’s Chilean province. Daily prayerful thanks to God are due for my seven decades as a Sister of Providence.
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