Missioner covered a wide variety of ministries 43 years in Hawaii
Maryknoll, N.Y. — Maryknoll Sister Cecile Therese Burton, who served as an educator and social worker in Hawaii for more than 40 years, died Feb. 17 after a long illness at Maryknoll Sisters Home Care, N.Y. She was 91.
Sent to the Islands in 1949, she spent 43 years here in a variety of assignments. She was a grade and junior high school teacher, a religious education coordinator, a parish pastoral worker and taught English as a second language. In the 1960s, with Hawaii grade schools adding foreign languages to their curriculums, Sister Cecile, a French major, qualified for a Fulbright Scholarship to study in France in the summer of 1965, obtaining a Cert.D’Assiduite.
In 1979, she took a course in clinical pastoral education at Central Islip, N.Y.
Sister Cecile expanded her mission field, becoming involved in a Peace Education Program, teaching peace and non-violence to children. She was an active member of the Peace and Justice Committee of the Maryknoll Sisters in Hawaii from 1979 to 1994.
In 1991, while in Kailua, she started a new project, “Walking with Women,” for women in prison and in shelters, and began advocating for women’s rights. She was also involved in various community action programs, such as senior day care and a shelter for abused women and children until 1998.
Frances Eloise was born on Sept. 23, 1924 in Washington, D.C., one of three children of Cecile R. Burton and Frank E. Burton. The family moved to Philadelphia and she graduated from Immaculata College, Immaculata, Pa. in 1945.
She entered Maryknoll on Sept. 6, 1945, at the sisters’ New York motherhouse in Ossining, taking the religious name Sister M. Cecile Therese. She made her first profession of vows on March 7, 1948, at Maryknoll and her final vows on March 7, 1951, also at Maryknoll. She then taught for a year at St. Anthony School in the Bronx before going to Hawaii.
In 1999, Sister Cecile moved to the Maryknoll Sisters residence in Monrovia, Calif., where she helped in an adult literacy program, taught piano and helped children at a local middle school improve their reading skills. She returned to the Maryknoll Sisters Center in New York in 2006.
Sister Cecile funeral was scheduled for Feb. 23 with interment to follow in the Maryknoll Sisters Cemetery.
