To all at St. Paul’s Convent in Jersey City Sister Josita Snee was known as “Josie.” To the employees at Pathmark she was know as the “little sister” who whizzes up and down the aisles every Thursday morning, looking for the best meat cuts, the best fruits and vegetables, and the specials for “her sisters.”

As a white novice, Josie explained, she began to bake bread. First she followed her predecessor’s recipe in the kitchens of Mount Saint Mary in 1932 but soon, after a year, she relates, “I did my own.” The parishioners at the noon Mass were envious when they came out of the convent chapel, smelling luscious aromas of bread, chocolate chip cookies, and a surprise delight for the sisters about to begin their weekend on Friday afternoons.

Peggy Snee, as she was known to her family and friends in Derry Castle, Kilkelly, County Mayo, came to America at age 18 and immediately secured a position as a domestic. For four and one half years she performed her duties as cook and housekeeper as well as caring for young children. She remembers leaving Ireland on Holy Thursday because the steamers did not run on Good Friday.

One season Peggy and her sister, Helen, made a mission in Holy Family Parish in New Rochelle. Having watched the sisters in their white habits and black cloaks come and go over a period of time, she asked Helen, “How would you know if you wanted to enter the Convent?” Her sister replied, “You will know.” During the mission she lit a candle “to know.” She then confided in the parish priest her idea and soon she was knocking on the convent door of Holy Family saying, “I would like to become a nun.” Sister Marie Anthony answered the door and arranged for her to return to speak with Sister Rose. Soon she found herself in New York with Sister Jean Marietta and Sister Bertille, shopping for “nun things.” After a six-week visit back home, she entered Mt. St. Mary on December 8, 1931.

Her love and devotion to her family and to her roots were ever present. She kept in touch with her six sisters and two brothers. How devoted she continued to be with her sister Helen in the Bronx. We often heard about her brother, Mickey, in England. As a newly professed Dominican, Sister was assigned to the kitchen and immediately her talents were discovered. Her ability to prepare food was one thing but to orchestrate the demands of a very active motherhouse complex was certainly another. Her fondest memories of her days at Mt. St. Mary’s included: rising at 4:30 am to take out fifty chickens and prepare them for cooking, second table service at 11:30, priests’ dinner at 11:45, infirmary dinner at 11:55, dinner for the Academy students at 12:00 noon and Mt. St. Mary’s sisters’ dinner at 12:10.

Entrance days, Investing days, Bishops’ celebrations, graduations, feast days, St. Dominc feasts, lawn parties, Mother General Installations, Chapters, Visitations, building dedications—all produced people who were hungry. So for twenty-eight years Sister Josita met the challenge of planning, preparing, baking and scrubbing. “Saturdays were the days I could get some time to scrub my stoves.”

In 1960 it was decided that a concession would assume the Mt. St. Mary kitchen and Sister Josita reluctantly but obediently left for New Jersey. There she assumed the roles of care-giver and caterer as well as the cook for thirty sisters. The tailor, the druggist, the mailman, the milkman, the soda man, the UPS man—all knew Josie. All the men in her life admired her wit, her faithfulness to her vocation and her pride in her heritage. Josie never taught a class, or served as librarian, reading specialist, or nurse, but she was all of these people in her service to, and concern for, the Sisters and all who entered her kitchen. “Get off your feet” was a common expression she would tell us when we arrived home from our ministries. Many a night Josie was waiting up for one who had a late meeting or she had a table set for a group coming home from a long trip late at night.

After the dishes were done and she had her last cup of coffee and piece of pastry, you could find her in the chapel fingering her beads. To the very day she died one could find her with the rosary in her hand. How appropriate that she left us in the month of the Rosary and that last evening she was proclaimed the second “Queen of the Rosary” by one of our sisters.

Josie directed her own departure from St. Paul’s to Mt. St. Mary Residential Care. She planned ahead and knew her objective. She wanted to go to Newburgh to help the sick and elderly. This she did in 1991 when she was in her eighties. She immediately found much to do and ministered to many of the residents. She would rise early every morning and bring hot coffee to sisters who were confined to their rooms. She would take extra buns or desserts for sisters who might choose not to eat them at the meal. Sisters found her to be a good listener and a kind counselor and consoler.

A steady image of Josie is her pushing her special cart with the tray, which enabled her to continue her service, whether it was delivering mail, a cup of coffee, or a left over pastry. No one would take the cart with the Irish and American flags even when it was parked behind the bush in front of the main entrance while we took her out for dinner.

Common sense was a key gift. How often she would bring us back down to earth when we would propose something that did not quite make sense. For example, not too long ago she was approached to go out to the patio to hear the Irish tenor. The aide, in her kindness and concern, insisted that she could go. She turned to her and said, “Look, I am half dead. I have heard all the Irish tenors I am going to hear, and so I am staying right here.” When she became weaker and we talked about her dying in a casual way she was always sensible. Last October Sister Ann Jerome and I were going to Ireland. I said, “ Josie, don’t leave while we are in Ireland.” Without skipping a beat, she replied: “For God’s sake, don’t worry, I’ll call you.” Her wit and wisdom never ceased.

When Josie became the resident in need of constant care, and her independence became less and less, her compassion and gentleness became deeper and deeper. Her concern for her caregivers was evident, and to them she became the counselor and consoler. When we would ask her what she wanted us to bring to her, it was always something she could give away. She loved to share. When we began to bring a smaller crumb cake because we felt it became difficult for her to cut up the large one, she commented, “What’s with the small cake?” True to form she left a part of her stipend to buy donuts for her caregivers on the Friday after her death.

Josie’s death was a significant one. She asked one of the sisters, “How do you know when to go?” The reply was “You will know.” It struck me that this was the question she posed to her sister, Helen, when discerning a vocation. The reply then was, “You will know.” Even on the event of her death Josie calmly crossed over to her new life, gently, softly and obediently.

Oscars, plaques, women of achievement medallions, press releases, do not include women such as Josie, but we know that she was a very special person, and to her God she is a very special Dominican.

Sister Josita was an amazing woman, an amazing Dominican Sister of Newburgh and an amazing Dominican Sister of Hope because she was gifted with (in song) “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved and set me free; I once was lost but now am found. Was blind but now I see.”

Philomena Marie McCartney, OP
October 21, 2004

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