Sister Rosanne LaManche in 2002 places a lei from Hawaii on a statue of St. Marianne Cope at the motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Francis in Syracuse. (Photo courtesy of Valerie Monson)
Sister Rosanne LaManche served as a Franciscan nun for more than 75 years and a nurse for 53, but she needed only an instant to name the most cherished days of her long career.
“I’m most grateful for my time at Kalaupapa,” she said during an interview 12 years ago at her motherhouse in Syracuse, N.Y. “It was the most satisfying part of my life. I still miss all the people there and think of them often.”
Word arrived at Kalaupapa recently that Sister Rosanne died Sept. 23 at the Franciscan Villa in Syracuse. She was 93.
Like so many Franciscans, now called the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, who worked at Kalaupapa, Sister Rosanne was drawn there by the legacy of St. Marianne Cope — even though she didn’t know it at first. When Rosanne learned of Mother Marianne, she wasn’t looking for spiritual inspiration, she was simply desperate to get a school assignment done. A student at East Syracuse High in 1936, she was supposed to read three biographies and write a report on them. The deadline was approaching and she hadn’t read a single one.
With panic starting to settle in, a package arrived in the mail addressed to her mother: It was a biography of Mother Marianne. Young Rosanne had never heard of the selfless nun who devoted much of her life to helping people in Hawaii affected by leprosy, but the book was an answer to a prayer and a foreshadowing of her own destination.
“Little did I dream then that I would be a Franciscan of that same order, much less did I dream of ever going to far-away Molokai,” she wrote in 1974 while remembering that fortuitous book.
The titles of the other biographies she read for that assignment were forgotten long ago.
Her real calling occurred a few years later. By then, as a Franciscan employed as a nurse at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Utica (where Mother Marianne had also worked), she lived with Sister Mary Magdalene Miller. In the summer of 1918, Sister Mary Magdalene was assigned at Malulani Hospital on Maui when she was suddenly summoned to Kalaupapa to care for Mother Marianne during her final days. Sister Rosanne listened intently to the stories Mary Magdalene shared about Mother Marianne who eventually took her last breath and died in her arms at Bishop Home.
So when the nuns at St. Elizabeth’s were asked if anyone would like to serve at Kalaupapa, Sister Rosanne — with the zeal of a 28-year-old — raised her hand, humbled by the opportunity to follow the path of Mother Marianne. The woman who saw her off? A proud Sister Mary Magdalene.
Sister Rosanne immediately had second thoughts as she headed off for “this little dime in the middle of the ocean.” Upon arriving at Kalaupapa in September of 1949, she was overwhelmed by all the cemeteries and the possibility of so much death. She was nervous, uncomfortable and didn’t know if she could ever fit in.
But a community picnic following Mass at St. Philomena Church assured Sister Rosanne that she had made the right choice. She began talking to the residents and found them to be warm, open and fun.
“That day I had a change of heart and I felt I was home,” she wrote.
Deep friendships and trust evolved and Sister Rosanne eventually collected testimonies from six Kalaupapa residents who remembered Mother Marianne. The testimonies were presented as part of the record in support of her canonization.
Sister Rosanne’s first Kalaupapa assignment lasted two and a half years. She eagerly returned in 1955 as nursing supervisor and stayed until 1961. It was an era of hope at Kalaupapa as medicine that would cure leprosy had been introduced in 1946 and many of her friends were beginning to get well. She not only cared for their medical needs, she worked alongside the Kalaupapa women who were skilled hospital orderlies and she went on adventures with others.
“We would go on hikes with Danny (Hashimoto) and he’d get a wild pig,” she said. “We used to go to Waikolu (Valley) and pick Job’s Tears in our white habits – they weren’t very white when we got back. We did a lot of hiking in the mountains.”
The Franciscan missionary also learned to drive at Kalaupapa, courtesy of Sister Wilma Halmasy.
“She was very abrupt and very specific,” recalled Sister Rosanne. “She would say ‘The ocean is over there. Don’t look, but it’s over there.’”
She later worked at St. Francis Hospital in Honolulu and in health care facilities in upstate New York, but it was Hawaii that would remain ingrained in her heart … and would suddenly emerge at the most unexpected of times.
More than 40 years after her days at Kalaupapa, Rosanne, then 81, was driving a friend back from a Syracuse cemetery where they had visited the graves of her fellow sisters. Although there was no ocean to distract her, she suddenly hit a huge pothole and the car flew up in the air.
“Big puka!” Sister Rosanne cried out spontaneously.
It was like she was still back home in Kalaupapa.
Valerie Monson is a freelance writer who writes about Kalaupapa and Kalaupapa’s people.
