(6 of 10)
In 1906-07 Mary Rogers was assistant professor of biology at Smith College. She had taken to helping Father (later Bishop) James Anthony Walsh, Boston's director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, in his busy work. When Father Walsh started a foreign mission society, he found a fine headquarters site near Ossining, N.Y., but there was some prejudice in those parts against Catholic organizations. Mary Rogers suddenly became a wealthy young Bostonian looking for a country place. Her goggled chauffeur accompanied her to the negotiations with hardly a word; beneath his linen duster was a clerical collar. After the transaction was completed, she transferred the deed to Chauffeur Walsh in consideration of $1. Mary Rogers, and five other women who had come to help the Maryknoll Fathers,* began by calling themselves "Teresians" because of their devotion to St. Teresa. By 1920 they were a congregation of 35 missionary sisters, were self-supporting and had canonical approval. By common consent they made Mary Rogers their Mother General. Her new religious name: Mother Mary Joseph. One of her friends (a dressmaker who used to make clothes for Actress Maude Adams) helped Mother Mary Joseph with the new order's uniform—grey chambray, modeled on one of her own homemade dresses.
Mother Mary Joseph is retired but still lives at Maryknoll. Since 1947, Mother Mary Columba has run the order with great skill, humor, and an unflagging capacity for travel (every six years she must visit every single chapter house of the order, takes frequent trips between times). The Mother General plainly has the abilities of a top industrial executive—which she might easily have become.
Up from the Files. Mother Mary Columba, once Elizabeth H. Tarpey, was born in Philadelphia to an Irish mother and an English father ("I wouldn't say he was very devout, but Mother was"), went to Catholic grade and high school. When she was twelve, she heard a Jesuit speak on Indian missions and wanted to leave at once. Her parents managed to persuade her to wait. While she waited, she read (Mark Twain and Horatio Alger in public, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the sly), eventually went to work as bookkeeper for Shellenberger Inc. (candy manufacturers). Six years later, in 1914, she moved to the Remington Arms Co., Inc. as secretary to the chief of records. In a short time she was in charge of the company's special-service department.
But Elizabeth Tarpey was still waiting. When she read about the new Teresians, she decided that perhaps she had waited long enough. She entered as a postulant in December 1919, just before her 27th birthday. At first she had executive jobs at home, then she was appointed regional superior in the Philippines. In 1931 she was elected vicaress (second in command), and in 1935 she spent a year traveling as Mother Mary Joseph's deputy through Asia and the U.S. This world wide experience was helpful when she became Mother General herself, and had to direct the liquidation of the mission in Communist China.
Around the World. Since 1950, Mother Mary Columba has launched new missions on Likiep and Yap (Pacific islands), in Chile and Peru, on Mauritius Island in the Indian Ocean, in Formosa. Maryknoll's main activities around the world include :
AFRICA. Two dispensaries and a novitiate for training native sisters.