Inspired by a sermon about Father Damien, Texas-born Sister Mary Andrew Bomba joined the Sisters of St. Francis of Syracuse and fulfilled her wish to labor where the saint of Molokai labored. She died in Honolulu on Dec. 12 at the age of 92. She was in religious life 66 years.
About her arrival in Kalaupapa in 1966, she wrote, “Nineteen years after joining the Syracuse Franciscans, I was standing at his [Father Damien’s] grave. I was awestruck as I realized it was Sept. 9, the same date as my departure from home [Texas].”
Sister Mary Andrew worked in Kalaupapa twice for a total of 12 years taking care of her fellow Franciscan sisters and putting her cooking skills to use. A talent ed seamstress, she also did mending for the patients in Kalaupapa’s Bay View housing and hospital.
Born with the name Bernadine on June 3, 1921, in Pleasanton, Texas, to Polish-German parents, Sister Mary Andrew was raised on a farm where she helped grow peanuts and raise livestock.
She also spent time caring for elderly aunts and uncles during the Great Depression and helped support the family by canning vegetables, cooking and curing meat, and sewing. She became an excellent seamstress which later became her ministry.
When she was 12, Bernadine heard a sermon from a visiting priest about Father Damien and his charitable work among the patients in Kalaupapa. “A desire was born in me to work there also,” she recalled on her 60th anniversary as a Sister of Saint Francis.
She prayed a novena to St. Andrew with the hope that some day she would be able to work in Kalaupapa. In 1947, at age 27, she joined the Sisters of Saint Francis in Syracuse, N.Y. When she was invested in 1948, she took the name Sister Mary Andrew, reflecting her devotion to St. Andrew, the namesake of her parish church in Texas.
Sister Mary Andrew spent her early years as a religious sister as a school teacher. After her profession in 1950, she worked primarily in New Jersey and New York, teaching at St. Joseph School, Hoboken; St. John School, New Brunswick; St. Peter School, Utica; St. Mary School Baldwinsville; and Bishop Ludden School in Syracuse.
She was assigned to Kalaupapa in 1966, serving there nine years.
Her services were then needed at the Franciscan Sisters’ pensione (small hotel or boarding house) in Rome, Italy. Sister Mary Andrew enjoyed greeting visitors in the heart of the Vatican for the next nine years. In 1985 she returned to the United States and assisted for two years as a seamstress in Mercy Hospital in Auburn, N.Y.
Her next assignment, in 1987, brought her back to Hawaii where she assisted at St. Francis Convent until 1992 when she was sent back to Kalaupapa to continue her work with the sisters and patients for three years.
Sister Mary Andrew was very close to her family and made frequent visits home to Texas. She celebrated her 50th anniversary as a Sister of Saint Francis at her parish church, delighted to be with so many members of her family.
In her eulogy, her nephew Sandy Locke remarked that, when her age had made home visits impossible, “our family made a commitment to bring our mom to Hawaii for yearly visits. Our aunt was a wonderful person and I’m sure she looked forward to those visits as much as we did.”
“She will always hold a special place in our hearts and memories,” he said.
Retiring at Saint Francis Convent in Manoa in 1978, Sister Mary Andrew spent the last 34 years in prayer and sewing. She was described as always being patient and available to help. She taught one of the sisters the “right way to make jams and jellies.”
At her 60th jubilee, she said, “The 12 years spent in Kalaupapa were the most beautiful and inspiring of my 60 years in religion.”
Sister Mary Andrew was preceded in death by her parents, two brothers, Joseph and Ralph Bomba, and her older sister Agatha Bomba Jasik. She is survived by her younger sister Eleanor Bomba Locke and numerous nieces and nephews.
Her funeral was Dec. 23 at the St. Francis Chapel in Manoa. She was buried Dec. 24 at Diamond Head Memorial Park.
