The Birth of a Clown

by Sister Anne Miriam Hunt, CSC

This is the journey of an only child, the daughter of devoted parents — a Catholic mother and Protestant father — who gave her a hard time when she was trying to answer God’s call to Holy Cross.

My mother and father married in upstate New York, and came to Washington, D.C., where my father worked his way through Georgetown University Law School.  My mother was a devout Irish Catholic; my father, a Protestant, at first Methodist and later Christian Scientist.  They were married 10 years before I was born so I was the “apple of their eyes.”

When I was only 10 months old we moved to Brazil where my father was a lawyer for a coffee company in Rio and Sno Paulo.  I went to first grade in the Catholic school in Sno Paulo before we returned to the United States.  When I was 7 years old I made my First Communion and Confirmation at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Washington, D.C. — my first contact with the Sisters of the Holy Cross, even though I attended a public school.

My father began his service as a lawyer with the State Department and we returned to South America when I was 9 years old.  We lived in Santa Marta, Colombia, on the coast, where I attended a one-room schoolhouse and was taught by a teacher from England.  We later moved to Bogota, the capital, when my father resigned from the State Department and took a job with the United Fruit Company in Colombia.  We lived with the manager of the company and his wife and she became my tutor, using a mail-order program for overseas students.  All this time I had no playmates — my milieu was adults.  My mother was very faithful to her Catholic faith and she and I went to Mass every Sunday and to festivals.

On the steps of the churches lepers often sat begging.  I was moved to sympathy, and even though I was only 10, I felt I wanted to take care of them and even dreamed of discovering a cure for their disease.

We returned to Washington, D.C., in 1931 and my father returned to government service at the State Department.  This required him to arbitrate legal cases in Egypt and Austria.  This was pivotal for me since my parents decided not to take me with them, but to enroll me at the Academy of the Holy Cross, which at that time had resident students as well as “day hops.”  Although my parents were only gone three months, this decision began my lifelong relationship with the Sisters of the Holy Cross — a decision my father often regretted.

I attended the Academy of the Holy Cross, Dunbarton College and Blessed Sacrament Church where I became more attracted to the sisters and felt a desire to join them. I shared this desire with Father Clement Kearney, O.P., my philosophy teacher in college sophomore year.  He confirmed my vocation, but suggested that I not share this with my parents until after graduation.  However, I felt that I owed it to them to share it, and one Sunday at breakfast I told them.

My father became enraged, feeling that I had been brainwashed.  He rushed up to Dunbarton and confronted the superior, Mother Rose Elizabeth.  He wrote out a contract stating that they were not to accept me in the Holy Cross community for a period of three years after graduation, and that I was not to return to Dunbarton and was to have no contact with the sisters.  I learned about this contract through a phone call to Mother Rose Elizabeth who asked me to come to see her.  She shared with me my father’s decision, but asked me to wait to hear it from him.

My father did not immediately tell me.  Instead he told me he was taking me to Cornell University in upstate New York to enroll me there.  It was 1939 and he told me to invite a friend — after going to Cornell we would go to the World’s Fair in New York City.  The next day we left for Cornell.  On the way, while he was driving, he skidded on wet pavement and our front wheels caught in a ditch and the car turned over three times, ending upside down.  However, none of us was hurt, no fractures, no cuts, only bruises.  We didn’t even get checked out at the hospital.

The next day after breakfast my father took me for a walk and told me about his encounter with Mother Rose Elizabeth and their agreement.  He started to cry and said that he felt that God had protected us in the accident, and he told me I could go back to Dunbarton, but asked me to be open to other options.  We did drive to Cornell, a beautiful campus, but I was not enrolled, and then we went on to the World’s Fair.

When we returned home my parents felt that I needed to experience life in a real home.  We had lived in hotels and apartments, so we moved into a lovely home.  I had always wanted a dog, so for my birthday I received a wirehaired terrier puppy, Rowdy.  For Christmas I found the keys to my own car and a fur coat.

My father was so concerned that I would not be open to other faiths that he took me with him once a month to the Christian Science Church — after my mother and I had attended Mass and eaten breakfast.  While there I took the opportunity to say my rosary.

I took violin lessons from the time I was about 8 years old until I was in college.  I hated to play solo, but enjoyed playing in an ensemble at the Academy of the Holy Cross, and once, in the D.C. Junior Symphony Orchestra, I played second violin.  It was an experience of belonging and community, of diversity, different people with different instruments making beautiful music together.  I was hungry for community, eager to join a group that would make beautiful music for God.

I graduated from Dunbarton in 1941.  I worked for the Treasury Department as a clerk typist while waiting out my third year before applying to Holy Cross.  I was so afraid to bring up the subject, but with the support and prayers of Father Kearney I wrote a short letter to my parents telling them I still wanted to enter Holy Cross.  I gave it to my father.  I then contacted Mother Rose Elizabeth who told me that I had to have written permission from my parents.  I went back to my father and told him what she had said.  He didn’t answer, but finally gave me a letter that said:  “To whom it may concern, this is to state that my daughter Anne Hunt is free and 21 and entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  It was signed by my mother and father.  In June 1942 I began my application to Holy Cross.

On July 21 I told my parents that I was going on vacation to New York City and from there I was going to Saint Mary’s, the mother house of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, in Notre Dame, Indiana.  My father came to my room during the night, knelt down beside my bed and prayed aloud, “Please don’t take her.  She’s all I have.”  Then he cut a lock of my hair.  It was the closest I ever came to not going through with my plans.

I left the next day with a friend to go to New York to see Jimmy Cagney in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”  My father was at Union Station with my mother.  He had a box of red roses that he gave me and inside was a red construction paper heart torn into two pieces.

My father sent me long letters on legal-size paper, begging me to return to them and to work for my country in time of war.  He did come to visit me; my mother did not until I went to Mount Carmel Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, in 1945 to begin my nursing education . The last time I saw my father was at my graduation from Mount Carmel School of Nursing in September 1947.  He asked me to go home with him.  I told him that the next summer I would take my final vows and would spend two weeks with them.  He said, “If you don’t come with me now you’ll never see me alive again.”  He left for Miami where he had retired.  My mother called me the next day to tell me that he had had a stroke. I rushed to be with them, but he died before I got there.

I share this story of my journey to encourage any woman or man who encounters opposition from their parents.  God’s grace strengthened me, as well as the support of my spiritual director and the sisters who knew my struggle.

My fantasy of caring for lepers was never realized.  I learned instead that my lepers were the very poor whom I cared for on the clinical floor at Mount Carmel Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.  I later became a director of two schools of nursing.  I missed the “hands-on” care of patients, but was encouraged by my spiritual director who told me that I was multiplying my loving concern through the students.  I hoped it was.

After 28 years of ministry in hospitals in Columbus, Ohio, Anderson, Indiana, and Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1972 my journey took me to become a member of the Movement for a Better World.  I traveled with different teams — a priest, a sister, sometimes two sisters, and a lay person — to give week-long retreats on Vatican II, based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, and to encourage small faith communities in dialogue.  These five years took me to parishes and seminaries on the West Coast and to Barbados, Trinidad and Guyana, where I was the only person from the United States on the team.  It was a wonderful five years.

I returned to Washington, D.C., to be available to my aging mother and to get a master’s degree in pastoral counseling from Loyola College in Baltimore, in addition to serving out an internship in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius at the Center for Spiritual Growth in Wernersville, Pennsylvania.  I spent the next 14 years at St. Dominic’s Church in Washington, D.C., responsible for spiritual development serving as a spiritual director and counselor.  Along the way I participated in a program in clowning and puppeteering.  Now that I am in my 80s it has all come together as I volunteer at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, as a clown and puppeteer.  I take my puppet on visits to share with the patients the value of prayer and humor in healing.  I also distribute articles on both prayer and humor and give each individual a blessing while I pray with and for them.

It has been a long journey, but I am grateful for all the wonderful days — and even the hard days — which have given me an understanding heart.  I pray that God continues to use me in his surprising ways.