Sister Marion Storjohann, SS.CC.
April 12, 1915 – March 2, 2013
Sister Marion Frances Palmer Storjohann, SS.CC., 97, died on March 2, 2013 at the Catholic Memorial Home in Fall River, Masssachusetts, where she had lived for the past 10 years. She was born Marion Palmer on April 12, 1915 in Bronx, New York and was baptized soon after her birth. She was the oldest of three children of William and Emma Palmer. Marion was an active, fun-loving girl who like to write poetry, play the piano, play outdoors and play the occasional prank. She was also deeply religious and dreamed of becoming a nun from the time she was a young girl. However, her parents wished her to follow another path.
She met Louis Storjohann and the two were married on June 11, 1938 in the Bronx. They raised four children in Queens and on Long Island, before retiring to their dream home in 1975 in Barton, Vermont, very close to the Canadian border. There they enjoyed the outdoors, hiked and grew vegetables on part of their 10 acres.
Sister Marion was an avid writer and poet, inspired by nature, by social issues of the day, by politics, by her deep spirituality, and by her many family and friends. She once said, “I felt that my call was for social justice lived out in service to the underprivileged.”
After Louis died in 1976, and her father died in 1979, Sister Marion left Vermont and pursued her life-long dream of devoting herself to that calling by becoming a Sister in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. She was professed on August 21, 1983, and took her final vows on August 15, 1987.
Sister Marion continued her work of preaching peace through non-violence. She was a great admirer of Martin Luther King, Jr., and had joined his historic March on Washington in August 1963. She was an ardent supporter of the Civil Rights movement, she protested the Vietnam War and was outspoken on the rights of women and calling for equal rights for gay people in the church. She was also devoted to the poor and to the poor in health and spirit, administering to the needs of patients suffering from A.I.D.S., to prisoners, to women in homeless shelters, and to anyone in need of a friend.
Sister Marion was well known as someone who always spoke and acted on what she believed to be right, moral and just. She often attended protests and rallies, and was arrested twice at such protests, once outside the White House in Washington, D.C. and once at a site where nuclear weapons were being tested in Nevada.
Sister Marion is survived by her brother, Lester Palmer, her four children, Audrey Lawrence, Alan Storjohann, Arlene Chávez, Wayne Storjohann, eleven grandchildren and several great grandchildren.
Please join us in praying for the repose of the soul of Sister Marion Storjohann. May the Sacred Hearts welcome her into Their eternal home.
United in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Regina Mary Jenkins, SS.CC.
Provincial, Pacific-USA
03/02/2013