Sister Eileen Houlihan is 100 today
Michele Azuta from the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary communications department interviewed Sister Eileen Houlihan for her 100th birthday, which is today. Sister Eileen is the third Sister this year to turn 100. Her birthday will be celebrated Oct. 27, with a Mass at the IHM Motherhouse.
According to Sister Eileen, teaching every student in her music classes meant learning to play all the instruments herself. Sister Eileen’s first instrument was the piano and she moved on to the woodwind, brass and stringed instruments. She says the trumpet gave her the most trouble, as she did not have the chops. There were no Dizzy Gillespie cheeks in Sister’s face. She also taught chorus in the schools to which she was assigned.
Sister Eileen Houlihan is celebrating her 100th birthday today. She was born at home in Detroit in 1922. Her father was born in County Clare, Ireland. As an 18-year-old young man, he immigrated to Detroit and moved into the rooming house his older sister, Mary, operated. Her father worked odd jobs until he acclimated. Once established and married to Eileen’s mother, he joined the Detroit Police Department. He remained a police officer until he retired.
There were eight siblings in Sister Eileen’s family. Of the eight, there were two sets of twins. Eileen’s older Sister, Kathleen, was a twin and two years older than Eileen. She joined the Monroe IHM congregation after high school, while Eileen joined the IHMs two weeks after her 1940 graduation from St. Mary of Redford in Detroit. A third sister joined the Franciscan order of nuns. When asked what she remembered about WWII rationing and other wartime activities, Sister Eileen remembered, with horror, oleo.Invented in France during a butter shortage, oleo used cow byproducts, including beef fat, to simulate butter. Sister Eileen grimaces when she recalls the white substance, which came in a plastic bag with a yellow capsule that one had to mix with the white fat so it would appear as butter. Eighty years later, the memory remains unsettling.
After her first profession in 1943, Sister Eileen attended Marygrove College where, in 1945, she earned a bachelor’s degree in music. She began teaching studio music and boys choir at St. Matthew Elementary School on Detroit’s east side. She taught full-time during the year and spent summers pursuing her master’s degree in Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame. In 1954, she received her degree.
Along the way, Sister Eileen had various ministries. One of her favorites was the eight years she spent teaching at her old high school, St. Mary of Redford, at the same time her mother worked there. Her happiest time was at Our Lady of Lake Huron Parish in Harbor Beach, Michigan, where she served for 15 years. That opportunity came about when she called Father Tom McNamara, whom she knew from an assignment in Saginaw. Father Tom was now ministering there. He was delighted to get her call and welcomed her. She loved being close to Lake Huron, the beauty of the water and found joy in her teaching and ministry. She was responsible for the entire parish in her final three years there, stepping in for a critically ill priest.
In January 2004, Sister Eileen retired and returned to the Motherhouse in Monroe. She is grateful for the life she has. She has been able to travel to Ireland to see her father’s homeland three times with her sisters. She learned to drive, and she and Kathleen became hodophiles (travelers with a special affinity for roads), driving wherever they needed until Kathleen died and Eileen’s eyesight began to fade. She loves to read large print books and has read all the available volumes in the library. You will see her initials in each book if you check the sign-out logs. She often checks there to see if she has read the book in the past.
When asked if she is looking forward to her birthday, she says, "I never thought I’d live this long.” Sister Eileen is happy women have more choices and glad she can now wear pants. She said those habits were beautiful, but ridiculously hot. One had to lift the scapular to get any air against the skin and cool down a bit. She was happy when the beautiful blue habits were refashioned into skirts and suit jackets. She keeps close contact with her youngest sister, a youthful 89 years, and they talk on the phone a couple of times a week. Sister Eileen is someone content with where she is and where she has been. She is a truth-teller, and I think we can all be grateful for that.
This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Sister Eileen Houlihan is 100 today
