'In Her Own Words' Brings St. Mother Theodore Back To Jasper
Actor, writer and director Sandra Hartlieb summed up the afternoon of March 18 in three words as her eyes filled with tears.
“This was awesome.”
Hartlieb performed “In Her Own Words,” a dramatic performance based on the journals and letters of St. Mother Theodore Guerin, to a packed room at St. Joseph Parish’s Kundek Center. Her performance preceded a Mass celebrated by Bishop Charles C. Thompson, and the blessing and dedication of a statue of St. Mother Theodore on the St. Joseph campus.
Hartlieb, of Indianapolis, travelled to St. Mary-of-the-Woods, Ind., to be with the Sisters of Providence when now-Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI canonized St. Mother Theodore in 2006. The visit inspired Hartlieb to write and develop “In Her Own Words.”
“As I was researching and writing the script from 2007 through 2009, St. Mother Theodore was urging me to tell her story,” Hartlieb said. “The first time I read her account of the institution of the Sisters’ first mission school in Jasper, I remember thinking, ‘I really have to go to Jasper.’”
She made it on March 18; her performance marked her first visit to St. Joseph Parish.
“Mother Theodore was waiting for the right time to bring me to Jasper,” Hartlieb said. “This is the right time … the 175th anniversary of the mission school here.”
Assisted by her sister, Nora Pritchett, Hartlieb told St. Mother Theodore’s story in four scenes – The Journey, Living in the Woods, Growth and Challenges, and Conflict and Hope. Growth and Challenges included St. Mother Theodore’s account of hearing from Father Joseph Kundek with an urgent plea for the Sister of Providence to establish a mission school in Jasper to teach the children of German immigrants, and how the school was formally established and opened on the Feast of St. Joseph, March 19, 1842.
How times have changed
Today, Google Maps shows a 101-mile route from greater northwest Terre Haute, where St Mary-of-the-Woods is located, to St. Joseph Parish in Jasper – following U.S. 150, U.S. 41, U.S. 50, and State Routes 257 and 56.
Hartlieb includes St. Mother Theodore account of the sisters getting to Jasper from St. Mary-of-the-Woods in 1842. They travelled by horse-drawn wagon west to the Wabash River, where they took a boat south to the then-diocesan seat of Vincennes. A stagecoach took them from Vincennes to Washington, Ind., where a carriage was waiting to transport them to Jasper.
For information on “In Her Own Words,” contact Hartlieb at beiltrah@sbcglobal.net or the marketing office at noraroad@twc.com.
