Sylvia Hecht, SSND

Professed in 1954

Current Ministry: Service to our senior sisters at Mt. Calvary, WI

Growing up on a farm in central Wisconsin and attending a one-room schoolhouse, I shared a simple and stable life, working with the animals and in the fields with my parents, two brothers and two sisters. We were the only Catholics in our school and surrounding neighborhood. As children we often experienced fighting and prejudice because of our religious affiliation. We attended a mission church in Weyauwega, Wisconsin where I was baptized and received the sacraments. Sisters came to teach us catechism and Bible history every summer. Right from the beginning, I was attracted to the sisters because of their kind and caring ways.

After I graduated from 8 th grade, I went to Menasha, Wisconsin to attend St. Mary's High School where I met the School Sisters of Notre Dame. Finances being meager, I worked as a nanny to earn my tuition. The other students viewed me as an outsider, with no social skills for city living, and no money to buy the style of clothing of the day. This was a painful rejection. Through all of this, I felt the sisters' love and care for me. They were my champions. I fell in love with them and wanted to be like them! After high school graduation, I entered the convent of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Milwaukee. I felt freed from the weight of past responsibilities and I could focus on my studies and my new life in community.

My first years of ministry were as an elementary school teacher. Then, in the late 1960s, civil disturbances and riots in the African American community shook the pillars of white America. I was teaching at St. Elizabeth's, which was located in the area of the Milwaukee unrest. When our Catholic school became Harambee Community School, and all but two SSNDs left, I was one of the two that stayed. This decision to stay changed my entire life. In the beginning, I struggled to minister in a cross-cultural setting. Eventually, I realized that I daily received more than I gave. This grace carried me through feelings of anger regarding racism, helplessness and exhaustion. After 35 years of living and ministering in the African-American Community, I felt as if I belonged, and had been gifted by the people I had come to serve. During these years I taught individualized education with a non-graded classroom. I also became certified by the state of Wisconsin as a learning disabilities teacher.

Gradually I felt the call to work with adults and families, and in 1982 I opened the St. Elizabeth's Women's Center, which became known as the Shade Tree Family Resource Center. What a challenging and exciting adventure! Ministering to families at Shade Tree always included outreach into the community advocacy, and support groups as well as evangelization and promotion of vocations to religious life. There were 15 Shade Tree families who became members of the Catholic Church, two women were called to SSND vowed life, and two entered into the associate relationship. After 12 wonderful years directing Shade Tree, I once more felt the call to move on. After a sabbatical, I spent 10 years back in the classroom in a small Wisconsin town, coming full-circle back to teaching!

My most recent and current call is the privilege to serve our sisters at Mt. Calvary, Wisconsin. I believe I have a gift to care for our elders - having cared for my own mother in her final years - and I bring a pastoral presence as I attend to their daily needs and they , in turn , gift me with their wisdom and holiness.

Being a School Sister of Notre Dame is a wonderful gift. I know that I am more because I belong to a group of educated and dedicated women who go about making this world a better place. My heart, my spirit, and my world, have been expanded by the experiences that were offered me. My most treasured moments have been the opportunities I had to assist in the empowerment of those who felt marginalized, just as the sisters of my childhood had done for me.

Because we are an international community I feel united with our sisters and their ministries around the world, and it propels me to be a better person in my own part of the universe right here, right now. As I write this I am filled with joy and God Energy. If you follow the star in your heart and it will lead you to Jesus, to joy, and to service.