Missioner, teacher, social worker served island communities with love
Maryknoll Sister Marie Anne May, who served in Hawaii for 15 years as a teacher and a social worker before spending the balance of her life’s mission on the Micronesian island of Yap, died at Maryknoll Sisters Center in New York on April 6. She was 94 and a religious sister for 73 years.
“I thank God for his faithfulness through the years,” she wrote in 1975 on the 25th anniversary of her entry into religious life. “I promise to serve him until death by living out the Gospel counsels of obedience and poverty and celibacy within the evangelical community of the congregation of the Maryknoll Sisters for the purpose of proclaiming the good news of Christ’s universal love in a world-wide context.”
That she did.
Marie Anne May was born Nov. 26, 1928, in Brooklyn, N.Y., one of five children of Rose (Glossa) May and Joseph F. May.
After earning a bachelor of arts in chemistry, Marie entered the Maryknoll Congregation at Maryknoll, N.Y., on Sept. 6, 1950. She professed first vows on March 7, 1953, in New York and her final vows on March 7, 1959, in Honolulu. She took the religious name Amata Marie.
Her first assignment to Hawaii was as a community member in St. Catherine Convent, Nuuanu. She studied social work at the University of Hawaii followed by two years as a caseworker for Catholic Social Services. But with the Hawaii region in need of teachers, Sister Amata Marie was assigned in 1955 for four years at St. Anthony High School, Wailuku, where she taught science and religion.
A year more of study was followed by eight additional years teaching science on Maui.
Sister Marie returned to social work, earning a master’s in the field in 1970 from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. Back on Oahu, at Catholic Social Services, she focused on family counseling as a roving field worker, covering rural areas, responding to anyone who could not get to the central office.
Following an invitation to Maryknoll to consider ministry in Micronesia, Yap in particular, Sister Marie was assigned there in 1974. In a letter to a friend, she wrote, “I know I should be feeling scared and apprehensive about what I’m going into in Yap, but I feel enthusiastic and peaceful instead.”
In Yap, she encountered a small island nation navigating huge cultural shifts resulting in alcoholism, drug abuse, delinquency, increased incarcerations and suicides.
In 2010, Yap State Government delivered a resolution recognizing Sister Marie’s 37-year commitment to the people of Yap: “She has been instrumental in providing programs and counseling for various social issues in mental health, substance abuse, family life and needs of children, and also started jail visit programs for alcohol related problems.”
In a “letter of appreciation” upon her death, the Maryknoll Sisters described Sister Marie as “shy, brilliant, conscientious, sought understanding, lived simply, was a great letter writer and had a delightful sense of humor.”
What was also clearly sustaining for Marie, was her attention to spiritual life, faithful to prayers, retreats, current theological readings, and renewal programs. Ever the scientist, she profoundly pondered that it was impossible not to be close to God in nature.
Sister Marie left Yap in 2011, retiring in Monrovia, California. In January 2015, she returned to Maryknoll, N.Y., and later moved into Maryknoll Sisters Residential Care. Her designated prayer ministry during those years was for prisons.
