From Southern California to Alaska, Sr. Susan Fitzmorris taught children of all ages and in many subjects during more than two decades of ministry in education.
“There was something about every place that I taught that I enjoyed,” she says. Students in Seattle, Walla Walla, Vancouver and Moxee, Washington, gained from Sr. Susan’s respect, compassion and fun. She also ministered in Fairbanks and Anchorage, Alaska, and at St. Finbar’s and Providence High School in Burbank, California.
As with many Sisters in those days, she was new to teaching and had to “learn on the job.” She panicked on her very first day in the classroom when she covered her entire week’s lesson plan on the first day of school. Fortunately, her mentor, Sr. Francella, assured her she could repeat the same lesson throughout the week.
Sr. Susan quickly learned the art and eventually earned her Bachelor of Science degree in education during summers at the College of Great Falls, now University of Providence. While studying there she lived at St. Thomas Home.
Born in Olympia, Washington, she was one of ten children and was taught be the Sisters of Providence at St. Michael’s school in the Washington state capitol city. The gift for teaching was nurtured in a loving and supportive home. Sr. Susan was blessed with a mother who respected and cared for everyone and a father who had a live-long love of reading.
She began her novitiate at Mount St. Vincent in 1948 and took first vows two years later.
In 1974, Sr. Susan retired from teaching, taking up a new ministry at St. Joseph Residence where she eventually became supervisor housekeeping and laundry at Mount St. Vincent, the adjacent facility.
While at the Mount, she found a new joy in the training program for physically and mentally challenged young people. In her work she marveled at their ability to learn new skills and use them in housekeeping, maintenance, laundry and other jobs.
“Each one had a gift,” she remembers, “the ministry was helping each one find out what their gift was.”
Twenty years later, retiring again, visitors could find Sr. Susan volunteering in the gift shop at the Mount and managing the used furniture inventory at Caritas Court, home to many Sisters.
Now living at Sr. Joseph Residence, Sr. Susan enjoys reading and rooting for the Seattle Mariners.