Missioner served Isles 30 years as an educator, parish minister
Maryknoll Sister Anita Smith, who served more than 30 years in Hawaii as an educator and parish minister, died Sept. 4, in Middlesex Hospital, Middletown, Connecticut. Anita was 92 and a Maryknoll Sister for almost 70 years.
Anita Marguerite Smith was born on May 28, 1925, in Hartford, Connecticut, to John Joseph Smith and Anna (Relihan) Smith, the fourth child in a family of six girls and one boy.
She joined the Maryknoll Sisters in Ossining, New York, on Sept. 7, 1947, receiving the religious name Sister Mary Theophane.
St. Michael’s School in Waialua was Sister Anita’s first assignment after making her first vows at Maryknoll, New York, on March 7, 1950. It was where she professed her final vows on the same date in 1953.
She was sent to Maryknoll Grade School in Honolulu in 1959 and in 1965 was appointed superior of the Maryknoll Convent.
In 1972 she returned to the Mainland to earn a master’s degree in education administration at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut and then returned to Honolulu to serve as principal of Maryknoll Grade School until 1981.
After that, Sister Anita felt called to serve the church as a pastoral minister. In 1983, she gained master’s degree in pastoral ministry and in 1984, went to Holualoa on the Big Island to work as a pastoral assistant and to share a chaplaincy ministry with an ecumenical group of ministers and to participate in a drug awareness program in the schools.
In 1990, she returned to Maryknoll Center in New York for three years of congregational service. In her later years she did social work and parish ministry.
According to an obituary on the Maryknoll Sisters website, Sister Anita’s “use of the aloha greeting was second nature to her, so we knew that Hawaii was never far from her heart.”
Anita loved the color orange and arranging flowers. She was a crossword connoisseur and an avid reader. But most of all, she was committed to participating in the mission of the church, however possible.
