By Ann Aubrey Hanson

RANCHO BERNARDO – Sister Michele McQueeney, OSF, is soft-spoken with a shy smile.  As a child, she admits, she was a tomboy, a lover of sports.  She was delighted, despite her mother’s dismay, with a neighbor’s birthday gift of a football.

From a young age, adventure and challenge seem to have been her watch-words.

 Born in Auburn, NY, the only child of Margaret and Earl, Michele showed no early inclination to enter the religious life.  It wasn’t until she was in high school and worked as a nurse’s aid at Mercy Hospital, that the idea of life with the Franciscans began to light her mind.

“They were so full of energy and lots of fun,” she says of the sisters of St. Francis.

After graduation, she studied nursing at St. Joseph Hospital, run by the sisters.  And a year later, on May 21,1957, she entered the community.

Hearing of the need for teachers, Sister McQueeney willingly changed her studies from nursing to education.  Degree in hand, she began teaching biology at the Franciscans’ high school in Syracuse, while pursuing her master’s degree during the summers.

But imbued with the spirit of St. Francis, Sister McQueeney wasn’t content to find a secure niche and stay there for life.  She craved adventure.  Tired of the New York winters, she sought the exotic and moved to Hawaii, where she lived for the following 20 years.

“I love the ocean,” says the inveterate swimmer.

In Hawaii, she taught and then served as vice principal and principal at St. Francis School in Honolulu, an all-girls school which served students from as far away as Japan and Taiwan.

When the job at St. Francis School palled, she decided it was time for a major change, “before I got too old to do something else.”

Finding a job in the local Want Ads, she left education and began work at a private, non-profit financial agency.  The company managed money for elderly clients who were no longer able to manage for themselves.

Sister McQueeney’s experience with financial management had been gleaned from her years as administrator at the school.  She quickly found that running a non-profit company held its own challenges.  In the years with the agency, she built it into a thriving enterprise.

“I loved my time there, it was very rewarding,” says Sister McQueeney.

Eventually again, she was lured by the siren call for a change.  With Sister Ann Gertrude Vierra, OSF, and Sister Laura Abat, OSF, she moved to San Diego in 1999, each seeking new adventure, each without a job.

“I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble finding work,” she says with a laugh.

First, she worked for the County of San Diego, then moved to St. Paul Senior Houses and Services downtown, working in social service.

Today, Sister McQueeney is Director of Evangelization and Adult Ministry at San Rafael Parish, where she celebrated her 50-year jubilee on April 29 with a Mass and festivity in the parish hall.

She came to the parish three and a half years ago after the death of Sister Vierra, who was taken by leukemia.

“We call her ‘Ducky,’” says Msgr. Dennis Mikulanis, pastor of San Rafael.  “She’s like a duck on a pond that seems to float serenely from place to place calm and unruffled, but if you look underwater, you see the duck’s feet and paddling madly.”

She laughs when asked what profession she will pursue next.  Politics and entertainment are definitely out of the question, but she believes she’ll move on when the time comes.  Change keeps her sharp.

“I need new stimulus,” she says.  “I don’t want to cling to the known.  I find that I get energized by change.”

“I often think of those who stayed in Syracuse,” says Sister McQueeney “and I think of how different my life would have been had I stayed there.

“The spirit of St. Francis is one of the things I think is important,” she says and she has experienced joy wherever she has gone.  “There have been some hard times, but nothing I’ve ever regretted.”

Reprinted with permission from Cyril-Jones Kellett, editor of  The Southern Cross  Diocese of San Diego California,  June 7^th edition