Tampa Tribune

3 Sisters Have Given Lifetimes of Service To The Community

By MARC J. YACHT Special to the Tribune

Published: Nov 13, 2006

Sisters Irma Multer, 93, Helen Lange, 93, and Pauline Block, 91, are related by their calling. Each has been a Benedictine nun more than 75 years.

Their careers have followed parallel paths since entering the sisterhood in 1930.

Their home base is St. Leo. They remember a poor community in the 1930s where the major employers were a Lykes orange packing plant and a local lumber mill. The Great Depression left many Pasco families destitute.

The 1940s brought the German prisoner-of-war camp advocated by the Abbott of Saint Leo Abbey. The sisters can recall when Seminole Indians came to the area to seek shelter from hurricanes and storms that would flood the coast. American Indians would camp on the abbey’s grounds.

Sister Irma reflected on why she became a nun. As a teenager, she studied at a boarding school in Texas. “We were students sitting in the dining room at the academy, and you could look out the window and see long lines of destitute men, women and children waiting for food,” she remembered.

The students had witnessed the beginnings of the Great Depression. Sister Irma was impressed with nuns who distributed provisions to the needy. And she became one, entering the religious community at St. Leo in 1930. She traveled from Texas to Florida with four cousins. There, she, Sister Helen, Sister Pauline and the others entered the Order on July 30, 1930.

Initially, they taught locally at The Holy Name Academy for girls and the St. Benedict Preparatory School for boys. The Benedictine sisters also had orange groves and would ship oranges nationwide to raise more funds.

Many students attending the schools came from outside Florida, and some were from other countries; the sisters remember children from Cuba and Central America. Teaching assignments took them from Pasco County to Texas and Louisiana, but they predominantly were in Florida. They taught circus children in Sarasota schools, remembering their families as gracious. Unfortunately, many would attend school for just a few weeks before going on tour.

Close Encounters

In the 1930s and ‘40s anti-Catholic sentiment made for strange encounters.

Once, late in the morning, they found themselves needing transportation to the train station in Dothan, Ala. Catholics were few in this area, and black-robed nuns were never before seen. The priest could visit only once a month. Taxi drivers initially refused to transport the sisters. A young boy spotted them and exclaimed: “The witches are in town!”

When they arrived at the depot, they could not find the station master. Some local college students seeing the nuns offered assistance. They found the station master hiding behind the potbelly stove. With prodding, he agreed to sell them tickets to their destination.

The nuns were warned to remain at the station, and the local sheriff was called. At 10 p.m. they boarded a train that took them, as they called it, from “that backward town.”

Sister Irma also recalled walking to the post office in Ocala. A woman pointed at her. “Cover your children’s eyes - here comes the devil’s wife!” the woman shouted.

But there were examples of generosity and humor.

Sister Helen mentions needing fabric to sew a habit and was referred to a Jewish merchant. Two men in the back of the shop looked nervously at the two nuns at the counter and finally approached them, giving each a quarter. The nuns graciously accepted and then returned the coins to offset the cost of the requested material.

‘Family, Family, Family’

The sisters’ tenures as educators total more than 225 years. They view the lack of family support as the largest issue facing school progress. The breakdown of the family unit and the lack of respect for education and its value are issues that override teacher quality and classroom size.

Schools have the best-trained teachers, smaller class sizes and the most sophisticated teaching tools ever, they note. Yet children are graduating with poor reading, science and mathematical skills. They don’t know the basics. Blaming schools and teachers for inadequacies in learning is wrong; parents must accept their responsibility for the success or failure of a child.

The need for money and keeping up with the Joneses leave many children neglected without proper encouragement to work hard at studies and respect their teachers. Add to that pressure placed on children to progress based on standardized testing, and you have a formula for failure. After all, children also need to play, relax and improve based on individual ability.

Exposure to violence, too much television and computer games, plus peer pressure, work against a child’s progress in school. Without children appreciating the need for a solid education, advancement will be hindered, the sisters point out.

Vocational education needs more respect and is a good track for the nonacademic. The need for accountability to be placed where it belongs is missing from our efforts to improve our children’s education. Schools and teachers shouldn’t be used as scapegoats for student failure.

“Family, family, family,” stresses Sister Pauline.

The three sisters, despite their ages, stay busy. One serves as the community’s archivist, while another crochets baby caps and other items for the community gift shop. The third continues to serve as the community purchaser.

In total, we’re talking almost 300 years of service.

The writer, the director of the Pasco County Health Department, is a member of the board of directors of Community Aging & Retirement Services Inc. This is part of a “Living History” series focusing on Pasco’s seniors.