In Loving Memory...

Sister M. Teresa Margaret, CSC
(Margaret Helen Terhaar)
Birth: May 26, 1908
Profession: February 2, 1937
Death: April 12, 2004

Sister Teresa Margaret , Margaret Helen Terhaar, was born on May 26, 1908, in Cottonwood, Idaho, the fourth child in a family of six, three girls and three boys. Cottonwood is in a part of northern Idaho known as the Prairie, a high plateau reached by steep winding roads. It was an area settled by immigrant German Catholic farmers, whose lives centered around faith, family and farm. It was this rich heritage that her parents, George and Mary Weis Terhaar, started to pass on to her with her baptism the day after her birth.

The Terhaars maintained two households, living in Cottonwood in the winter and moving about seven miles away to Greencreek during the farming season. It is here that Margaret probably developed her lifelong love of green growing things. Because of having two homes, Margaret and her brothers and sisters would change schools twice a year. She was taught by the Benedictine Sisters from Saint Gertrude’s Priory at Cottonwood. After graduation from high school in 1926, Margaret attended business school in Spokane, Washington, and later worked there and in Portland, Oregon, for a while. At some point she came back to Cottonwood where she was a telephone operator prior to entry into the Community.

Margaret knew she did not want to enter the Cottonwood Benedictines. As she said, “I did not want to wind up teaching my nieces and nephews.” A priest told her about Holy Cross, but he also said he didn’t know much about them. Margaret started corresponding with the sisters in Boise and was eventually accepted. The sisters invited her to travel through Boise on her way to Saint Mary’s so they could actually meet. However, the World’s Fair was being held in Spokane at that time. If she went to Boise en route to Saint Mary’s, she couldn’t go to the fair. Well, the fair won. She saw her first Sister of the Holy Cross when the door opened at the novitiate, July 1934.

As a postulant, she taught at Saint Mary’s, Michigan City. She was received into the novitiate in 1935 and given the name Sister Teresa Margaret. She made first vows in 1937 and final vows in 1940.

After first vows she taught fourth grade at Saint Paul’s in Los Angeles, California, for two years. She then began her preparation for the health field, where she would serve the rest of her active ministry. She studied nursing at Holy Cross School of Nursing in Salt Lake City and also received a bachelors of science degree in nursing from the Wasatch in 1942. She later did post graduate work at Western Reserve in Ohio.

Teresa’s first mission as a registered nurse was as the night supervisor at Holy Cross in Salt Lake City. She was then reassigned to Saint Alphonsus in Boise where, for five years, she was the director of the School of Nursing. It is said that the students loved her; they found her beautiful smile irresistible. In fact, the other sisters sometime teased her, calling her “the irresistible Sister Teresa M.”

The next years found her serving with her usual quiet generosity at Mount Carmel in Columbus, Saint Agnes in Fresno and Holy Cross in Salt Lake City. From 1960 to 1968 she was back in as director of nursing. She then spent one year in Fresno and returned to Boise, where she spent the rest of her active ministry days serving in medical records, and later as coordinator of the information desk. By 1981 her declining eyesight required her retirement from the hospital ministry, but she remained as a community member at Saint Alphonsus Convent. In 1987 she transferred to Saint Catherine’s, Ventura, and in 1999 she came to Saint Mary’s Convent.

Through her long years of service, Sister Teresa Margaret was noted and loved for kindness and her self-giving, for quietly and unassumingly doing what was needed, such as staying up at night with a sick child so a mother could get some rest. Her valiant spirit shone, too, in her acceptance of her cancer. Despite the pain she was not one to complain. Her acts of thoughtful kindness to those around her continued.

It was also said of Teresa that if you were looking for her and couldn’t find her, look in the chapel. One could also say, try the garden, another privileged place for encountering God. Teresa’s love of the earth and growing things continued all her life. She was famous for her roses. And, in Boise, her room was full of African violets that would be brought out and shared with the community when in bloom. Here at Saint Mary’s she tried to care for the plants on second floor until it became too difficult for her to walk.

As in the Gospel, early Easter morning Jesus called her by name. May she enjoy Him and the heavenly garden, forever.

Written by Sister Madeleine Marie, CSC

Memorial contributions may be made to the Sisters of the Holy Cross Ministry With the Poor Fund, Saint Mary’s, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556.