notes & news
Distinguished Alumna Awards were also given to Mary Nelle Gage SL, LHC Class of 1966, and Lucy Roucis, LHC Class of 1981. Mary Louise Buetner SL, PhD Lumen Christi Award According to the 2016 Loretto Heights College Reunion program, Sister Mary Louise received her bachelor’s degree in English and music at Webster College, Webster Groves, Mo., in 1931. She earned her master’s degree in English in 1933 and later a doctorate in English and philosophy from St. Louis University. She taught at Loretto Heights and was hailed as one of the nation’s foremost Shakespearian scholars by the Rocky Mountain News. In 1967 she was invited to teach at Al-Hikma University in Baghdad, Iraq, and later at Santa Clara University in California. She had many other achievements in business and government in Colorado and nationally. She died in Bardstown, Ky., in 1987. Dennis Gallagher, Irish American, former Denver Auditor for 12 years and professor emeritus at Regis University, was taught by Sister Mary Louise. He attended the LHC summer reunion and had this to say
about his former teacher. “Every time we met we would recite Sonnet 116, my favorite sonnet. Father Robert Boyle SL at Regis also encouraged us to memorize this wonderful sonnet and used it as a key to decide if characters in Shakespeare’s plays really loved. ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.’ “We all marveled at Sister Mary Louise’s widow’s peak peeking out from under her white starched head cap under her black veil. I’ve been thinking of her and Father Boyle this year of Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary. A teacher shares From left: Karen Cox, Mary Nelle Gage SL, his or her love of a subject with Bernadette Seick students. Mary Louise did that for joining the Loretto Community and all of us with Shakespeare.” accepting teaching assignments in Denver, Mary Nelle directed the speech and Mary Nelle Gage SL drama program at Bishop Machebeuf Distinguished Alumna Award High School, Denver, for four years. She As published in the Loretto Heights pursued graduate studies in theatre at the College Reunion program, Sister Mary Nelle studied speech and drama at Loretto University of Colorado, Boulder, and the University of Birmingham in StratfordHeights College where she graduated as Upon-Avon, England. top scholar and member of the Catholic College Women’s Honor Society. After
From left: Tovi Snyder, Kim Louie, Mary Nelle Gage SL.
In 1973, she joined Susan Carol McDonald SL, in Saigon, Vietnam, to care for abandoned, handicapped and malnourished orphans. Thus began a 20-year career in refugee resettlement on behalf of several Christian voluntary agencies. Through the years, she has continued her association with Vietnamese adoptees, organizing reunions for adoptees and their families. She has also escorted groups of adoptees back to Vietnam on a “Motherland Tour,” which enabled those who were adopted and relocated as young children to return as adults to see the land of their birth. As she accepted the Distinguished Alumna Award, Sister Mary Nelle said, “I accept this award as a representative of each of you, my golden classmates, who have for these past 50 years lived out the motto under which we entered Loretto Heights
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