Biography, Mary Teresa Di Modica (Sister Mary Rosalyn), Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana
Submitted to the USGenWeb Archives by Don Johnson,  Apr. 2001
with permission of
Dorothy Dawes, O.P. -- dmdawes@accesscom.net
580 Broadway, New Orleans, LA 70118, 504-861-8155,
FAX 504-861-8718 or 865-8079
photos at http://www.dominican-sisters.net/stmarys/people/rosalyn.htm

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                               A Real Nun Doll

    Sister Mary Rosalyn Di Modica is ninety years young, and still sewing! She 
    has lost count of the number of dolls she has made and sold. She is a
    busy lady, between her "cottage industry" and visits from her boys
    and girls, now in their seventies, who come back to see her.

    Born August 2, 1910, in Hammond, Louisiana, the first girl, second
    child of Joseph and Cora Di Modica, Mary Teresa was ten when her
    mother died. The father farmed, took care of the two children and
    nursed his sick wife through a long illness. When Cora died, he
    married Laura Ciolino, a young widow from Italy whose husband had
    died in the first World War. Her children were ages two and five.
    The couple had three more children, in what today would be called a
    "blended" family.

    When Mary Teresa was in seventh grade, beautiful, young Sister Mary 
    Dominic asked the girls "Who would like to be a sister?" and all the hands 
    went up. Mary was given a scholarship to the Dominican Academy in New
    Orleans, sixty miles away, where her Aunt Rose was working and
    learning English. Mary would often interpret for her aunt.

    Mary skipped to eighth grade, because the academy had no seventh
    graders that year. Five years later she entered the convent. In 1928
    she began teaching at St. Leo the Great School, and taught mostly
    primary grades in the Dominican Sisters' schools until 1995, when
    she retired to the motherhouse.

    She began making "sister dolls" to help raise money for the Dominican
    College Library, which had just moved to an old mansion in 1948, and
    needed "everything." She sold them for $5.00 each, and until
    recently was selling them for $25.00. The dolls are meticulously
    crafted by this nonagenarian, who doesn't want to raise her prices,
    because maybe someone couldn't afford it. "I feel sorry for people,"
    she says softly. There are those who maintain she is a nun-doll. The
    sisters are not advertising her work, because they are concerned
    that she works too hard, but those who have the dolls consider them
    collector's items.

    Her greatest challenge, she said, was teaching the altar boys their
    Latin in after-school hours. Sometimes they would catch the priest
    in a mistake, so she must have done well. She has enjoyed traveling
    to Europe, to Lourdes, France, and Ireland, where her Dominican
    community originated in 1860, and twice to Italy (where on the
    second visit she kept a promise to come back, spent six weeks, and
    visited many cousins) and to Medjugorje in Yugoslavia. She lost
    count of her trips to see her brother and his family in Chicago.

    When asked what was her happiest time, she said with a chuckle and a
    twinkle of the eyes, "It's all been happy to me!" and added
    thoughtfully, "I had joy in doing everything for God."

         Sister Mary Rosalyn finished her last nun doll in
         February, and on March 18, 2001, went to meet her God,
         face-to-face.

                    "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard,
                  nor has it entered into the heart of man
               what God has prepared for those who love Him."

             1 Corinthians, 2:9, where Paul quotes from Isaiah 64:3