At 103, Sister Claire Morin talks to her 'boss'

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

Want some good fun? Then visit one – or more – of our retired religious. Especially this 103-year-old.
Sister Claire Morin keeps you laughing with her wit, even as she shares her faith and life with due seriousness. Here’s a taste from an interview she and members of her congregation – Sisters of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin – gave to The Catholic Free Press Monday at Alliance Health at Marie Esther in Marlborough, the skilled nursing, rehabilitation and rest home where they now live.
The annual Retirment Fund for Religious collection raises money to help care for sisters such as these, and priests and brothers in religious communities. The collection, held in December in most areas of the United States, is being taken up in parishes in the Worcester Diocese on Dec. 11 and 12.
Asked for comments about the fund, Sister Claire says, “I’m not good talking about money.” She suggests telling people to give what their hearts tell them to.
“If I would say what I want, I would say, ‘Give us millions!’” she adds, with her characteristic humor.
Sister Lucille Pleau says Sister Claire is the fourth-oldest member of their congregation; one is 104 and two others are 103.
Sister Claire was born on Oct. 27, 1918, and recently celebrated her 103rd birthday.
“Oh, it was fun!” she recalls. “We ate a lot – cakes and sweets.” She also got two jelly donuts, a favorite of hers.
“If you want to live to my age, eat sardines,” she advises. She’s also fond of “medicine” – a tablespoon of liquor in hot milk.
“That came from the doctor,” she maintains.
“No it didn’t,” corrects Sister Lucille.
“I’m not alive on account of my brandy,” counters Sister Claire.
She’s a Worcester native – and not proud of it.
“I didn’t like Worcester,” she complains. “I stayed just one year, and my folks moved to Laconia, New Hampshire.” She liked it there, and stayed until age 19, when she went to Canada “to become one of these” (a Sister of the Assumption). Then it was on to teaching.
“I had junior high everywhere in New England,” she claims. Her sisters try to help her remember, naming places she could have taught.
“Let me think,” Sister Claire interrupts. “I have trouble thinking you know, after 100 years! Do you remember all the missions you went to?”
“Ya,” responds Sister Marguerite Normand, “because we’re not 103!”
Sister Claire says she taught at Notre Dame and Sacred Heart schools in Southbridge, as well as in Everett, Lowell and Salem in Massachusetts, and Laconia in New Hampshire.
Sister Lucille says her sister, Rachel Pleau Liese, 84, remembers having Sister Claire for a teacher in seventh grade at Notre Dame.
“I was that bad?” inquires Sister Claire. “That’s why they remember you!”
Sister Marguerite had earlier recalled having Sister Claire for seventh grade. Asked what she was like as a teacher, Sister Marguerite hesitated, then settled on “kindly stern.” She hastened to add a more positive characteristic: “She’s been gifted with a tremendous memory.”
Sister Claire proves that, rattling off birth dates of the sisters and Stephen G. Copper, the facility’s executive director.
“My dad had a lot of memory,” the 103-year-old says. “I inherited it from him.”
What did she inherit from her mother?
“Oh, she was so good,” Sister Claire says fondly.  “You know Mom – you all have one. They’re all the same.” She says her mother died at age 90, her father at 84. Her only brother “didn’t live very long” after serving in two wars; he died at 74! Her only sister, who had no children, died six months later.
“And I was left – 103-years-old,” she says. She laments that she couldn’t give her brother some of those years, “because he had a nice family.”
Sister Claire says she taught for 40 years.
“It was fun,” she says. She liked everything except parent-teacher meetings, because parents “wanted to know too much” about their children. “You had to say they were angels!” She liked it when she could tell the parents nice things but found it hard when required to reveal unpleasant truths about their children.
“My favorite subject was (when) I kept them after school,” Sister Claire says. She had the boys on their knees, sweeping.
“And then they came around my desk and we had fun. And then they went home” – except those who had to stay longer because they were being punished. The cleaning wasn’t punishment, she maintains; “that was a reward.”
“I wasn’t a boy,” Sister Marguerite pipes up. But she liked cleaning with the boys because they were funny, she says. She recalls one, staying after school as a punishment, pretending to throw one of Sister Claire’s plants out the window.
“Go home,” Sister Claire told him – which was what he wanted!
“She still has former students who come to see her – and they’re in their 80s,” Sister Marguerite says.
Sister Claire says she likes “everything” about being a sister – “except what I don’t (like)!” She says the deaths of five of their sisters during the pandemic shutdown hit her hard.
Sister Marguerite explains that a memorial Mass was recently held for those sisters.
Asked about her faith and her relationship with Jesus, Sister Claire says that’s a little personal, and she’s not going to answer! But she mentions trying to love God and neighbor, even when she gets angry.
Asked what she does now, Sister Claire replies, “I talk to God – he’s my boss.… 103! I never even thought of (turning) 100!”

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