of the Immaculate Conception B.V.M.
(Martha Jane Redman (Czerwinski))
February 6, 1918 – October 21, 2002
Saint Joseph Province
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
“May he live in you always and may you live with him and in him. Therein is true happiness, joy, and contentment.” (Blessed Mary of Jesus the Good Shepherd)
“I was born on a cold winter day on Wednesday, February 6, 1918, at 1:00 PM in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. I was the fifth of ten children. It is often said that the middle child is a neglected child and that Wednesday’s child is full of woe, but in both instances I gave light to both statements. None of us were given special treatment and of my childhood I had happy memories. I had an over-active imagination and was able to make the best of any situation. My father (Stanislaus Czerwinski) taught each one of us to play the violin. We formed a little musical group and played at family festivities and gatherings. Art was another of my favorite subjects. I spent winter evenings with my younger brother and sister drawing cartoons from the newspaper and even making up some of our own. And then one day I discovered the public library! I became addicted to the joys of reading – for life!”
“I was a rather shy child and blossomed only in the warmth and love of my family. In school, I was rather fearful of the strict religious teachers and did not do as well as I possibly could have. However, my first grade teacher fascinated me, and as soon as I came home from school on that first day, I solemnly declared to my parents that I would become a sister when I grew up, whereupon I immediately received the nickname of ‘siostra.’ This idea remained with me, off and on, throughout my grammar school days. After I graduated from the eighth grade in 1932, I had a profound religious experience which convinced me then that indeed I had a religious vocation. But it was well into September of that school year before I took any action.”
“On a certain Friday morning, while I was washing clothes with my older sister, I told her that I should really be in the convent by now. She agreed and took me to Bellevue to register at Mt. Nazareth Academy that afternoon. (My mother, Anna Budkowska Czerwinska, was away in Ohio, taking care of an old sick aunt.) I was told at the Academy by Mother Hillary Okon, Provincial Superior, to go home, pack my clothes and come back on Sunday. Which is exactly what I did. I found an old battered, wooden suitcase, put in an exchange of underwear and a couple of dresses, and went off to the convent, thinking that in a day or two, I would become a professed sister.”
“In the meantime, at my father’s insistence, I wrote a brief note to my mother, saying goodbye, because I went to the convent. Well, to say the least, I discovered soon enough that that was not the way to enter convent. In due time, after all the proper steps were taken, I became a full-fledged aspirant on the 11thof September of 1932. I remember my father saying that in most cases, daughters ask permission of their fathers to enter convent, whereas I simply told him that I was going. I answered, perhaps a bit too smartly, that when it comes to God, one does not ask for permission. One simply does.”
Thus wrote Sister Martha Jane Redman as she reflected on her vocation story. Baptized at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Pittsburgh February 10, 1918, by Reverend Joseph Sonnefeld, C.S.S.P and confirmed on May 14, 1935, by the Right Reverend Bishop Boyle in the same church, Martha continued her life journey. She entered the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth on June 23, 1935, and was received into the novitiate as Sister M. Marcella in Bellevue, Pennsylvania, on August 31, 1936. She made her first vows in Bellevue on August 15, 1938, and final vows on August 20, 1944.
Sister Marcella began her teaching career in 1938 at St. Adalbert School, Dillonvale, Ohio, teaching first and second grade. Her lengthy ministry of teaching extended to Cleveland and Newton Falls, Ohio; Detroit, Allen Park and Lansing Michigan; Erie, Farrell, Library, Pittsburgh and Mt. Union, Pennsylvania, serving both as a teacher and principal on many occasions. In 1983 Sister began part-time service as clerical aide at St. Augustine’s Academy and later at St. Casmir’s Parish in Lansing, Michigan. In 1989 Sister came to the Patronage of St. Joseph Convent where she was secretary and bookkeeper at Mt. Nazareth Learning Center and clerical aide in the Provincialate until 2002.
Sister Martha Jane never stopped learning. In her retirement years she took courses in the computer and in learning the paper cutting craft of Scherenschnit that she generously displayed in her place of work. Sister Noemi Tereszkiewicz remembers Sister Martha Jane as “a very pleasant person with a keen sense of humor – someone I would like to imitate.”
Always ready for change, Sister Martha Jane was quick to adapt. When permission was received after the closure of Vatican Council II to return to one’s baptismal name, Sister Marcella swiftly returned to “Martha Jane.” Later when assigned in September 1974 to St. Augustine’s Academy, Sister legally changed her sir name from Czerwinski to Redman. Even years later when her body weakened and she recognized that her days were limited, she entered into hospice care. She was transferred to Holy Family Manor on September 1, 2002.
Sister Florence Pawlicki, who visited her at Holy Family Manor during those final days, remarked: “I was extremely edified how graciously Sister Martha Jane accepted her imminent death. She prepared herself spiritually and then waited for Jesus to come for her. She never showed any anger during her illness; it was complete acceptance all the way. She just patiently waited to die.”
Despite her enthusiastic love of this life, the Lord took her gently to a new eternal life on October 21, 2002. Father Carl Kish, a long-time friend from Youngstown, Ohio, remarked at her funeral liturgy on Thursday, October 24, 2002 in the Provincialate Chapel. “Even in these later years when her energy waned, she still loved to celebrate a good meal with family and friends. She was great fun to be around. She was a woman of deep faith.” Sister Martha Jane is buried in St. Joseph’s cemetery in Bellevue, Pennsylvania. She was sixty-seven years in religious life and eighty-four years young.
Digitized by S. Brendan O'Brien, CSFN
Instructor
School of Arts & Sciences
History Department
Holy Family University
9801 Frankford Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19114
215-637-7700 x3279
srbrendan@holyfamily.edu
http://web3.holyfamily.edu/srbrendan
Last updated: October 2006