Akron nun’s painting found at rummage sale | Mark J. Price
A beautiful work by Sister Matilda, the painting nun of Our Lady of the Elms in Akron, has been discovered in Pennsylvania.
Lisa Hogan found it this summer at her church rummage sale at St. Louise de Marillac Church in St. Catherine Laboure Parish in Upper Saint Clair just south of Pittsburgh.
“I came across a beautiful floral, still life painting signed Sister Matilda,” Hogan wrote. “The piece is stunning.”
The gold-framed painting shows an arrangement of pink, red and blue flowers in a green vase. The work is not dated.
The former Caroline Bechter was born in Akron in 1887. She joined the convent in 1907, adopted the name Sister Matilda and taught art in Catholic schools, including Sacred Heart Academy and Our Lady of the Elms.
She painted oil portraits on commission, but never kept the money. All proceeds went to the Sisters of St. Dominic for educational purposes.
Her masterwork, a mural of St. Dominic receiving the rosary from Mary, is behind the altar in the chapel at Our Lady of the Elms.
Cleveland Bishop Joseph Schrembs arranged for Sister Matilda to study in Europe. In 1937, she enrolled at the Royal Institute of Art in Florence, Italy, and later studied at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
She fled Europe after Germany invaded France in 1940. U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt invited the nun to a White House tea that same year.
Sister Matilda retired from teaching in the 1960s. She was 93 when she passed away in 1980.
I wrote a story about the nun in 2012, which led Hogan to contact us.
“I want to thank you for writing such a detailed account of Sister Matilda,” Hogan noted. “I feel like Sister Matilda lives on through her paintings.”
Here’s something I didn’t include in the original article.
Years ago, I heard a rumor that Sister Matilda provided the U.S. government with intelligence about German troop movements inside France in the late 1930s. According to the story, she painted landscapes while noting German positions. The Nazis never suspected her.
A spying nun? The story might be apocryphal, but I want it to be true. Does anyone have any proof? It certainly adds a layer of intrigue to the nun’s trip to the White House.
I can see Helen Mirren playing Sister Matilda in a Hollywood movie.
When Stan Hywet shook
Timothy Meyer shed more light on the fireworks displays that Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens sponsored in the 1960s.
His family used to go see the fireworks because his parents were Stan Hywet members. And, yes, the traffic was horrible.
“At least once, we found it easier, or at least less frustrating, to walk about 2 miles each way from our house on Jefferson Avenue, in spite of there being no sidewalks most of the way up Portage Path,” Meyer recalled.
The whole idea sounded crazy to me. A stray rocket could have burned down the Manor House of the Seiberling estate. Apparently, my concerns weren’t far off.
“When the big rockets exploded, it sounded like every piece of glass in the big house was rattling, and it was probably rattling a lot of things other than just the windows,” Meyer noted.
“The larger rockets were fired from the terrace behind the house, but they were still close enough to the seating area on the front lawn that embers would drift down into the crowd. The blanket we took to sit on got several holes burned in it that way.”
The 1969 display, the last one scheduled, got rained out. Just as the Meyer family was getting ready to leave for Stan Hywet, the deluge began.
“We gave up on man-made fireworks, and settled around our kitchen table to watch a spectacular lightning display out the big window overlooking our backyard,” Meyer noted. “And we all agreed that this show was better than what we would have gotten at Stan Hywet.”
Memory of a lost cave
Bath Township native Phil Schoner, who lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, remembers exploring Wildcat Cave at Whipps Ledges in the Hinckley Reservation during the late 1950s.
“We got down to the lower room and saw names and dates going back to the 1800s carved in the walls of the room,” he noted. “The passage leading down to the room was very narrow in places.”
Schoner is lucky he didn’t get stuck.
Wildcat Cave is a natural formation in a sandstone bluff. The entrance, measuring 15 feet wide and 4 feet tall, originally led to a narrow passage that ran about 80 feet before opening into a large chamber.
In 1965, a 15-year-old boy mistakenly entered a crevice off the main tunnel and got wedged headfirst in a 9-inch crack. The story became national news. Rescuers worked for more than 24 hours before the boy was freed.
Afterward, the park service dynamited the back of the cave and sealed the passage with concrete. No kid can get trapped there now, but it’s too bad that the natural rock formation had to be destroyed.
“Glad to have had this experience before the cave was closed,” Schoner wrote.
Follow Me to Akron
Reader Jean Hose responded to the column about suggestions for a new Ohio motto on license plates: “Birthplace of Serial Killers,” “The Orange Barrel State,” “Land of LeBron,” etc.
It reminded her of the “Follow Me to Akron” bumper stickers that graced many a local car in the early 1980s.
Whenever her wisecracking little brother, John Wood, would see such stickers, he would add: “I don’t want to be there alone.”
Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com
Mark J. Price: 10 restaurants I miss from childhood
Akron flashback: Random people haunt my memories
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Sister Matilda’s painting found at rummage sale
