GOOD-SHEPHERD-HOMES-L Archives

From: "Audrey DePaolo" <>
Subject: Before my time.
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 19:21:05 -0400

Dear (We have to get a name for ourselves here, I don't know what to put
after, Dear?

I'm desperately trying to keep up with all my e-mails. Today I had '67. I
got myself on that genealogy list just for amusement at work and left my
home e-mail address. I have to get off the thing or I won't have time for
anything else. Someone please, tell me how to get my name off.

Getting back to the Good Shepherd homes and nuns. One would think I would
be a wealth of information since I was one of the nuns for eight years.
Sorry, if I disappoint you but I was so busy trying to be humble and
detached I must have let quite a bit slip by me.

This is what I do know--
In the 60's the order no longer took in pregnant girls nor anyone with a
drug problem.
The order never cared for babies
I'm sure they used the NY Foundling for adoptions. It was in the same
diocese as the NY GS homes.So that would make sense.
How the girls were treated depended a great deal upon the head group mother
and the superior of the house. Some of the homes were much more lenient
than others. However, rarely if ever were girls permitted to go out to the
movies. A handful of seniors in the late 60's were permitted to have P/T
jobs after school
St. Germaine's was attached to the Motherhouse. Villa Loretta was on the
same property with about a mile in between. Villa L only accepted girls
over 16. No girls stayed after their senior yr.. in high school.

If the order claims to have 7,000 members, the majority are over 60 and more
than half are contemplative. My one former superior is close to 80 and
still doing missionary work on a Caribbean Island.

When I lived in Albany I was going to attend the College of St. Rose but I
was gone before the term began.
I don't remember any nuns who graduated from there before entering. Few
were college graduates.

I believe the only GS house left out west of us is in St. Paul. I think I
read there are 60 sisters there. I know there is one place in New Jersey,
the one on 17th Street and maybe the one in Marlboro still exists. I'm
pretty sure they closed the Springfield one. Not sure about Brooklyn but I
would bet they did. The Motherhouse moved around 1990 from Peekskill to
Jamaica. They had a big sale, I would have liked to bought up some of the
antiques from the parlors.

Pat, I hope you can meet me next week at the signing.

'til later

Audrey

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• Before my time. by "Audrey DePaolo" <>