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One ASC Sees Her Life as 'Absolutely' Right as she celebrates 60 years

Story and photo by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

After 60 years as an Adorer of the Blood of Christ, what does Elizabeth Kolmer know with certainty?

“This (life) has been absolutely right for me. I knew very clearly that’s what I wanted to be.”

After 40 years as a university professor at St. Louis University, Sister Kolmer has found a favorite calling as a volunteer for social outreach at her parish — St. Francis Xavier College Church in St. Louis.

The parish spends a good deal of money — at least $60,000 annually — on helping people secure vital records for themselves and their families.

Children can’t be enrolled in school without birth certificates, and the homeless can’t stay in shelters without an identification card.

Each birth certificate costs $15, and if you have six children, as Sister Kolmer’s recent client has, the cost can be out of reach.

Sister Kolmer fills out forms and gives the mother what she needs to secure records for four family members and a referral to secure needed paperwork for the other children.

“The people who come in here are such an expression of God to me,” she said. “They’re so grateful for help.”
Sister Kolmer has been a volunteer since 2004 when she retired from the American Studies Department at the university.

Not content with offering direct aid, Sister Kolmer also works on a parish advocacy committee.
“Direct aid is important,” she said, “but changing the system is also important.”

When she decided to go to high school in Ruma — the summer before eighth grade — she said that pretty much determined that you would enter the order.

Born and raised in Waterloo, she and her older sister, Shirley, both decided independently to enter the Adorers in Ruma, with Shirley entering the year before Elizabeth.

“I got a good education,” she said, taking four years of Latin in high school. The first two years were required, but the third and fourth were not.

“We only had four people in Latin III,” she said, “so you had to be prepared for class.”

No opportunities to hope sister called on someone else would be available, and only three students persevered to Latin IV.

In 1945, not many opportunities existed for women in the church, she said. “I knew what I wanted to be — a sister — but not what I wanted to do.”

At one point the superior at the convent called Sister Kolmer into her office. She asked her if she wanted to go into nursing or education.

Sister Kolmer, surprised by the question, asked her superior whether she was really being given a choice, and finding out she was, said she did not want nursing.

Her career as an educator had begun.
With a bachelor’s degree in history, Sister Kolmer taught in diocesan elementary schools at St. Elizabeth’s in East St. Louis, St. Mary’s in Mt. Carmel, St. Albert’s in Fairview Heights and Immaculate Conception in Centreville.

Enjoying elementary school teaching, Sister Kolmer was on the way to getting a master’s degree to become a principal.
She had a Ford Foundation grant for her master’s work, and then she was chosen to pursue her doctorate.
“I loved going to school,” she said.

Her older sister, Shirley, also enjoyed teaching and had a doctorate in number theory. She taught 11 years before going to Liberia where she was killed in October 1992 along with four other ASCs.

“She was my best friend,” Sister Kolmer said. After talking to her family, Sister Kolmer gave the eulogy for her sister at a special liturgy at the cathedral in Belleville.

“I really wanted to do it,” she said, but she wanted it to be a decision the whole family made. They all decided she should do the eulogy.

Determined not to cry until she had finished her part of the liturgy, Sister Kolmer asked that no one talk to her about it before the memorial Mass began.

But when she walked into the cathedral and saw the large photos of each of the five women, including Shirley, she couldn’t manage to stop the tears.

“It was a very difficult time,” she said, remembering those tumultuous days when helicopters were landing on the lawn outside the Ruma convent where she and Shirley had walked up the front steps to enter into religious life.
Other important but happy memories of her 60 years include “all of the kids I taught.”

She met some of those “kids” at St. Louis University in American Studies that she initiated as a bachelor’s and master’s program. It later became a university department that she chaired.

Sister Kolmer said she always loved going to school and she still reads “a lot.”

She finally read the Aeneid in English since she had read it in Latin in high school, and she’s read some of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking’s work.

“I read whatever fancies me; I always want to learn something new.”

As a volunteer at her parish, she learns something new each day, meeting people who need assistance.
“This is one thing I always wanted to do — outreach. This is the highlight of my week,” she said.

Sister Kolmer expects to spend the remainder of her ministry doing outreach. “I really feel like I’m doing something.”