Sharp mind, compassion and daily walks: Sister Angela Mary on the secret to living to 100
Sister Angela Mary took on one of Queensland’s most combative premiers to give hope to those who at the time lived in fear.
“You’d never stay, you like dancing too much,” laughed Margaret Doyle when her 15-year-old daughter told her she wanted to become a nun. She asked her to think on it for a while. But after a year her daughter said she was serious, leaving their small Irish farm, moving to a convent in Cork in the country’s south where she trained as a teacher, then crossing the rocking ocean for five seasick-inducing weeks to Sydney. From there, she travelled by train to Brisbane, arriving in June 1947, her rosary beads somehow mashed into a banana in her pocket, her new life about to unfold.
Born Kathleen Doyle, she was now Sister Angela Mary, about to begin work as a teacher to 42 grade two students at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, Kangaroo Point. At the time, the idea that the 21-year-old would go on to administer three Mater hospitals, be a voice for the marginalised and go against the premier of the day to assist HIV and AIDS patients and become a Queenslander of the Year and inaugural Queensland Great among many other accolades, seems as unlikely as her transplantation from one side of the globe to the other.
Now, about to turn 100 on August 19, this petite woman who, as a Sister of Mercy wears the traditional veil, still has a mind as sharp as a winter wind off the Atlantic in her home county, and an easy gait courtesy of her daily 3-5km walks, is being honoured on her birthday with a lunch at Government House. Fourteen of her relatives coming from Ireland for the celebrations and on August 23 Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner is hosting a City Hall reception for her, with 600 guests, morning tea and a band of Irish bagpipers.
Born into a poor farming family at Six Crosses in County Clare in Ireland’s west to Margaret and Sonny (James) Doyle, Sister Angela Mary was the fourth of nine children, her only surviving sibling Una, 88, now in a nursing home, in a centre not too far from the family home.
“We had 56 acres, which is medium size in Ireland, but every square inch of it was fertile,” she says. “And we had wheat, oats and barley, all the vegetables we needed, potatoes and parsnips and everything, you know. And we had cows and calves, hens and chickens.”
Her earliest memory is of walking the lanes around the farm with her grandfather, her mother’s father who lived with them, when she was about five years old, and a favourite horse named Billy pulling the family to Mass on a Sunday morning in a trap.
She loved study but there wasn’t enough money for Sister Angela Mary to join her three older siblings at high school. “High school meant you had to board somewhere and pay the fees as well.” “I wasn’t annoyed, it was a fact of life.”
Instead she stayed on the farm. “It came to me one day that I could give my life to God,” she recalls as we talk in an office at South Brisbane’s Mater Hospital complex. “And I didn’t know what that meant, I thought in those days it meant you become a nun.”
She was about 15 and with “five boys in the family who had plenty to say about everything … I was timid about saying anything about it”, Sister Angela Mary recalls.
“Eventually I said one day to my mother, and she looked at me and burst out laughing. She said, you’d never stay. She said you like dancing too much.
“Anyway, I was advised to wait for a while. So I waited for about 12 months and I didn’t change my mind.
“And my mother said the same thing, you’d never stay, you’ll never stay. “And my father said, why don’t we give her a chance? My mother and father were close you know, they were a happy household. If she doesn’t like it, she can come back. “
Her fate was set. She applied to join the Sisters of Mercy in Cork _ an order began by Catherine McAuley in Dublin in 1831 _ where a group of sisters were looking for Irish girls who might want to work in Australia, “you know, for teaching or nursing or social work and teaching music”.
“I went there and it was wartime and there were 10 of us and we studied the Australian curriculum, it was wonderful,” she says of her teacher training. (Her late sister Nuala also joined the Order two years later, followed her to Australia and taught music at All Hallows for 37 years.)
It took five years because of World War II but eventually Sister Angela Mary, along with the other nine nuns, managed to get berths on a ship carrying mainly army, air force and naval personnel home to Australia. Her main memory of the voyage is everyone “every afternoon, vomiting into the sea”.
After her six months’ teaching at Kangaroo Point, she and the other sisters went to a noticeboard to see which of the Sisters of Mercy’s 40 schools they’d be heading to the next year _ maybe Bundaberg, Southport, All Hallows or Cunnamulla. “I couldn’t find my name anywhere,” Sister Angela Mary recalls. “I asked and they said, ‘You’re going to the Mater’.” Nursing. How could that be?
“They never really told you why, that wasn’t the practice in those days.”
“And I didn’t want to be a nurse, I was afraid of it. I thought you’d get sick people, you know. I might see blood, and I might see people dying.
“I hoped I would be put back teaching in a couple of years.
But she settled in on the wards, and then worked in the operating theatres for 15 years. “And I became good at that and anticipating what the surgeon needed.”
In 1966, in another unexpected twist, Doyle was told she was to become the administrator of the three Mater public hospitals _ the Mother’s, Children’s and adult _ at South Brisbane, a role she went on to hold for 21 years. “I said no, the first time I said no to a leader, I said I don’t know anything. I don’t know anything about big finances, I don’t know anything about government or relationships, anything,”
She named others who she believed would be better for the job but was told, “No we’ve picked you”.
Obedience won out and she enrolled in a Bachelor of Business majoring in Health Administration at QUT, and drove over the Story Bridge from the Mater to the George St campus four nights a week, rising at 4am to study and do assignments before work. “I loved to study. I just loved it, so that helped me,” she recalls.” And I also did a six-month course in public speaking at QUT.”
After learning the ropes Sister Angela Mary grew into the work, including overseeing the redevelopment of a new Mater Hospital Brisbane in 1981. When she heard staff talking excitedly about the building, she later organised Mother Teresa to visit _ “it’s your heart and intention and your approach and your willingness to help that makes the difference” _ to set the tone for the spirit of how she wanted the place run.
In the Eighties, a fresh challenge arose with the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with no help for sufferers in a climate of fear wrought by the Bjelke-Petersen government. Queensland AIDS Council president Bill Rutkin wrote to various agencies asking for help.
“The only one to reply was the head of the Sisters of Mercy Kath Burke and she said I would get on to it,” Sister Angela Mary recalls.
“I met with Bill and I said listen, I know nothing about this. Would you tell me? So he explained it to me … I didn’t know anything. I just wasn’t interested in that aspect of life at all. I wasn’t even thinking of it
“We had to be very, very careful that we didn’t … you know, that we didn’t let anyone know what was going on. We had three public hospitals. And if you took the funding away from them, they were done.
“One morning I got a call from Bill Rutkin, he said there’s a man dying of AIDS in Dutton Park … and there’s a priest going to say mass for him, would you like to come?
“When the mass ended, his partner realised the man was dead. And he threw himself across the bed in an absolute paroxysm of grief. He was sobbing out loud.
“And I so looked at him there and I thought, here are two men loved by God as much as I am and all other people are. I put my arms around him, I raised him up and I held him tightly like this, and he sobbed and sobbed. And you know, at that moment I thought it doesn’t really matter that I don’t know how to help them, but if I love, I’ll find a way.”
After she put it to the board, The Mater Hospital provided the AIDs Council with office space and three houses in South Brisbane where sufferers could stay free of charge.
Later she was approached by two federal public servants who asked if she would accept AIDs support funding, to circumvent the state government, which she passed to Rutkin to administer, although after she asked him to take condoms off the annual reconcilatiation, he duly reclassified condoms as “medical needs”. Federal health minister at the time, Dr Neil Blewett, later described the Sisters of Mercy as the “most altruistic of money launderers”.
Looking back over her century Sister Angela Mary says her life has been fine without the dancing. “My heart was in everything I did, it felt right.”
“But you know it’s not by yourself, it is not myself that did anything, it was always with someone helping.”
She delivered a TEDx talk in 2017 on empathy being the key to impact and has not changed her tune about the way to live.
“It’s mostly not to be judgmental, you just help where you can regardless of who it is, or what they do, or what their faith is, or if they don’t have any faith.” Sister Angela Mary says. “They are human beings who deserve to be loved and cared for. That’s how I grew up.”
Mater Foundation has launched a $10 million appeal in honour of Sister Angela Mary’s 100th birthday to support the launch the Mater Little Miracles Research Centre.
Sisterangelamary100.org.au
Originally published as Sharp mind, compassion and daily walks: Sister Angela Mary on the secret to living to 100
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