Missioner taught for 25 years in Hawaii schools before serving in Africa
Maryknoll Sister Jennie Burke, who was an elementary school teacher in Hawaii for 25 years from the 1950s into the 1970s, died on Jan. 22 at the Maryknoll Sisters Center in New York. She was 92 and a Maryknoll Sister for 72 years.
After receiving a bachelor of education degree from Maryknoll Teachers College in 1950 and working for a year at a school in the Bronx, Sister Jennie was assigned to Hawaii. She spent the next 25 years as a teacher at St. Michael School, Waialua; Maryknoll School, Honolulu; St. Ann School, Kaneohe; and as principal and house superior in St. John the Baptist School, Kalihi, and St. Ann School.
While in the Islands, she was also engaged in adult education.
After her Hawaii assignment, she returned to Maryknoll, N.Y., where she did mission education for three years.
She next worked in Africa from 1979 to 1986. After learning Kiswahili, she spent one year in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, doing pastoral ministry, especially working with small Christian communities. She then went to Zimbabwe to study Portuguese and work with Mozambican refugees.
She later returned to Tanzania to serve at a mission outpost in Sinon, often leading Sunday prayer services because of the scarcity of priests. Besides her pastoral work, Sister Jennie raised funds for many projects including the construction of several buildings.
Sister Jennie returned to the United States joining her order’s eastern region in 1998 to serve in pastoral work and adult education. She also spent time at L’Arche community for the intellectually disabled in Canada.
Jennie Martha Burke was born on Nov. 5, 1924, in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her family moved to Boston when she was young. She had said that she decided to be a Maryknoll Sister when she was eight years old after hearing a Maryknoll Father give a promotion talk.
She entered the Maryknoll Congregation on Sept. 6, 1944, taking the religious name Sister Miriam Terza. She made her first vows on March 7, 1947, and her final vows on March 7, 1950, both at the Maryknoll Center, N.Y.
In 1998, after coming to the realization that her memory was failing, Sister Jennie wrote a “last testament” to her fellow sisters, her family and friends, thanking them for their love and caring, saying how much she loved them all.
In 2001, she returned to the Maryknoll Sister Center in New York continuing to serve whenever she could. Her last act of service was to donate her body to science.
