Sister Ann Carol Brielmaier, MM

Born: October 28, 1924
Entered: September 7, 1943
Died: June 4, 2024

On June 4, 2024, some Sisters were in the room as Father Joseph La Mar administered the last rites for Sister Ann Carol Brielmaier. They sang, “I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have loved you and you are mine…”  Two sisters left to attend the 11:30 liturgy on the 4^th floor.  Just as it ended, the sisters learned that, as she had lived, Sister Ann Carol had very peacefully gone home to God at noon. She was 99 years old and had been a Maryknoll Sister for 80 years.

Ruth Elizabeth Brielmaier was born on October 28, 1924 in St. Louis, Missouri to Herman Brielmaier and Carolyn Englerth Brielmaier. She had four brothers: Charles, John, Paul, and Edward, and two sisters, Genevieve and Margaret—all of whom have predeceased her.

Ruth graduated from Roosevelt High School in St. Louis in 1942. She had already developed an interest in the missions, especially China, which began when she was a young teenager. As she wrote, “I avidly read the Maryknoll Magazine and books about China.” After high school graduation, when she told her parents of her desire to join the Maryknoll Sisters to be in mission work, they tried to dissuade her, telling her there were several “very nice groups of Sisters in St. Louis” that she could join; but her mind had already long been made up. Only Maryknoll would do.

On September 7, 1943, one year after graduating from Roosevelt High School and with the blessing of her parish, St Pius V, Ruth entered the Maryknoll Sisters Congregation at the Maryknoll Sisters Center in Maryknoll, New York.

Ruth received the name Ann Carol at her Reception into the Maryknoll Community on March 7, 1944, a name which she kept throughout her life. Ann Carol made her first vows on March 7, 1946, at the Maryknoll Sisters Center in Maryknoll, NY, and in one more year, she was ready for her first assignment overseas: South China.

In September of 1947, with seventeen other Maryknoll Sisters, (fourteen for the Philippines and three for China) she set sail from San Francisco, CA, for Hong Kong where the Maryknoll Sisters were at the pier to meet her.

After a few days in Hong Kong, Ann Carol, along with two other Sisters, took the train to Guangzhou, a large city in South China, and from there they went to Wuzhou where Sister Ann Carol began studying the Cantonese language.  In August of 1948, she was sent on to Jiangmen, where Maryknoll Sister Patricia Coughlin was in charge of a group of Chinese professed Sisters, novices and a group of high school students called aspirants. There, while continuing to study Cantonese, Sister Ann Carol taught English to the candidates. She also shared her talents as an excellent seamstress and her beautiful singing voice. Mass at the time was in Latin so she taught the Sisters Latin and many of the old church hymns. She made her final vows in Hong Kong on March 7, 1949.

On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong claimed victory over the Nationalist forces and declared China a Communist State; things continued to feel quite normal for a while. Soldiers appeared in the streets and the Sisters were questioned but very politely. Life continued peacefully until one day in 1951 when Communist officials arrived with their trucks and dogs. The Sisters and the whole group of Maryknoll missionaries on the large compound, bishop, priests, brothers and sisters, were questioned and asked to explain their presence in China.

The missionaries were told to evacuate their residence, even though their residence and grounds had been bought in 1930 by Bishop James Edward Walsh and belonged to the Church. All the religious personnel were relocated to a small, unsuitable housing facility. Three weeks later, after the local bishop agreed to pay a specified sum of money to the army officers, all the women religious, including Sister Ann Carol, were deported to Hong Kong in 1951. Sister’s dreams of fulfilling her missionary call in China were shattered. It would be years before any missionary would be allowed even to visit China.

Sister Ann Carol, however, had a resilient character.  She would make the best of the situation and follow the counsel of Mother Mary Joseph, our foundress, to go see what God had in store for her elsewhere.

The next few years were a mix of teaching and study. Once settled back in Hong Kong, Ann Carol enrolled at the University of Hong Kong. There in 1955 she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in geography and English. She taught at Maryknoll Convent School for a year and then went to Maryknoll College in the Philippines where, in 1957, she obtained her Teacher’s Certificate.

Back in Hong Kong, she began teaching at the Maryknoll Sisters School at Blue Pool Road. She taught religion, English and geography. Sister Ann Carol, as her Sisters and students remember her, was a gracious lady with a ready smile, always pleasant, welcoming, agreeable, helpful and flexible. One former student wrote, “We first met Sister Ann Carol in the mid-1950s. She was always smiling and encouraging us…we had such happy classes. We did not see Sister again until 2015. There was no mistaking it…. the same smile; it had stayed with us for almost 60 years.”

From 1971 to 1974, Ann Carol was asked to be the directress of the Adam Schall Hostel for women at Hong Kong University. Having completed that mandate, she returned to teaching, this time at Maryknoll Convent School in Kowloon until 1976. That year she was appointed principal of the Maryknoll Sisters School at Blue Pool Road. By this time, the Maryknoll Sisters had realized that they could no longer staff two big secondary schools in Hong Kong; the Columban Sisters agreed to take over the Blue Pool Road School. After leaving that school in 1979, Sister Ann Carol returned to teach at Maryknoll Convent School in Kowloon until she retired in 1985.

Ann Carol’s final mission service was in Macau as Director of the Catholic Pastoral Centre from 1990-1994. There she served the elderly, students and older youth in various ways. In May 1994, Sister Ann Carol returned to the United States and retired at the Maryknoll Sisters house in Monrovia, CA. There she served in the West Coast Promotion office for a year and did volunteer work with the Santa Anita Family Services Center, writing letters to prisoners and generally helping wherever she could.

She returned to the Center in New York where on April 1, 2012, she joined the Chi Rho Community. On June 1, 2018, realizing that she needed more care, she transferred to the Eden Community where she lived for six years, cared for lovingly by her aides—Sybill, Avrill, Claudia and Venlyn.

A brief story to close. When China opened to the world and churches were beginning to reopen, Sisters Betty Ann Maheu and Ann Carol joined a group going to China for a special religious ceremony. After the ceremony, they were walking on the grounds and Ann Carol pointed to a building, “I used to live here. Let’s see if we can go in.” They knocked and a gentleman opened the door. Sister said, “I used to live here, could we go in and have a look?” The house was now a factory where they made a variety of bags. Sister Betty Ann reflected later about this visit and said, “Through her smile, did I fail to see a tear in her eyes? After all these years was there still a piece of her heart in China?”

Today we welcome Father Michael Walsh, MM, who will preside at our celebration of the life of Sister Ann Carol.