The Good Life of Sister Marie Bernadette
The Good Life of Sister Marie Bernadette
During the first half of the twentieth century, Bingham Canyon was a roaring mining town. Although individual miners had made a living from the gold and silver desposits as early as the 1860s, it was consolidation of individual claims by large corporations like Boston Consolidated and Utah Copper after the turn of the twentieth century that made large-scale exploitation of the canyon's copper a source of some serious wealth. Plentiful jobs in those mines attracted a bewildering variety of immigrant laborers which made the town one of the most diverse communities in the country. Many of those were Catholics, and Holy Rosary parish was created to minister to them, as well as to Catholics in the nearby communities of Copperton and Lark.
The longest-serving pastor of those Catholics (1955-66) was Father (later Monsignor) John J. Sullivan, and he was assisted by a dedicated community of roughly a half dozen Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement (S.A.). One of those sisters during the years 1956-62 was Sr. Marie Bernadette, and her life is an inspiring tale of dedication in the face of some pretty discouraging experiences.
She was a Southerner, who grew up in Emmitsburg, Maryland and Washington, D.C. As a girl she was torn between two contradictory forces: she felt a vocation by age fifteen to the religious life, but she was rejected from the orders to which she applied. The reason: she was an African-American, and no American religious orders at the time were integrated. Eventually, during a visit to a retreat house in Washington, D. C. run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement, she met the saintly Superior, Sister Aloysius, who thought the racial restriction was atrocious and arranged for her to enter the order on New Year's Day, 1953. "I couldn't believe it!" Sister Marie exclaimed in her joy.
She remembers her years in Bingham as a time of almost unalloyed happiness, working under the direction of a great priest and serving a warm, enthusiastic group of parishioners. There was no Catholic school in the town, but the sisters ran a very active religious education program for the children, whom they would gather throughout the canyon for classes in an old school bus driven by Fr. Sullivan. The classes were held in their convent. Eventually in Copperton they applied for and were granted released time and school credit for religion classes for the Catholic children even as the Mormon Church ran its seminary program.
Perhaps surprisingly, in view of the great diversity of the Bingham population, the Ku Klux Klan was active there during her time. One of the founders of the KKK in Utah, in fact, was Dr. Russell G. Frazier, the Bingham doctor. Although Bingham had a "sundown law" to the effect that African Americans were not to be found on the streets after dark, she "never had a problem or was mistreated because of my race." This was no doubt mostly because she is a very light-skinned person, and actually had to inform the Bingham parishioners, after she had been there three years, that she was of African-American heritage.
On the occasion of Msgr. Sullivan's fiftieth ordination anniversary, she wrote to him to tell him that she thought of him every time a flock of Canadian geese fly over: he was the leader and the sisters and parishioners followed along in formation. "I hope one day," she concluded, "to fly through the gates of heaven flapping my wings and honking. Then St. Peter will know that another one from Msgr. Sullivan's flock has made in 'Home' safe."
Unfortunately, after leaving Bingham, storm clouds began to gather over Sr. Marie Bernadette's vocation. Although she enjoyed successful ministries at a mission in Brazil and in a community in New York, she also experienced difficulties that caused her to wonder if she could be more effective outside the order. After a protracted period of prayer and counseling, she received a dispensation from her vows and was allowed to leave.
But that did not mean that her ministry was over. Returning home, she worked for a time in the Library of Congress, then left to become a teacher at a school for the deaf.
And eventually she married. Although, as she said, "The 'modern' dating scenario was not for me," her parents introduced her to Richard Weedon, a widower with two children, and they were married in 1976. Weedon was not only a "very good man," as she characterizes him, but a very serious Catholic and a civil rights pioneer who became the first African American member of the Knights of Columbus in the state of Maryland.
Although retired now, Barbara Weedon continues to volunteer in various capacities while caring for her husband in a period of declining health. Expressing her continued devotion to St. Francis and his love for the natural world, the yard of their Emmitsburg home is replete with bird feeders and flowers that birds love. "I've been very blessed," she says. "I've had a good life, a beautiful home and a wonderful husband!"
