Last teaching Ursuline sister in diocese to retire

OGALLALA—Father Bryan Ernest, pastor at St. Luke’s Church and St. Luke’s School in Ogallala, calls her the “last of the Mohicans.”

Although she’s not a Native American, the “Mohican” Father Ernest is referring to is Sister Loretta Krajewski, O.S.U., principal/head teacher at St. Luke’s School.     “She’s the last active (Ursuline) sister in a school,” he said. “We call her the ‘warrior.’”

Sister Krajewski, who has been teaching for 44 years, the last 15 of which have been at St. Luke’s School, plans on retiring at the end of this school year. She is the last teaching religious, not only in the Grand Island diocese, but from her Ursuline community in Louisville, Ky.

Even though she is 67, Sister Krajewski admitted it was not exactly her plan to retire this year. But recent medical problems have told her otherwise. Not only was she diagnosed with Parkinson’s, she is also fighting an eye disorder known as pigmentosa and was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, undergoing a mastectomy in December.     “She’s a trooper,” Father Ernest said. “She’s had everything go the wrong way, but she is so strong and faithful. We’re going to miss the heck out of her. But she’s more ready than we are.”

Despite it all, Sister Krajewski said the word “retirement” is not in the vocabulary of the Ursuline community.     “We just go on to the next ministry,” she said.     Although she is planning to return to Kentucky, with the onset of the coronavirus, COVID-19, she said her specific plans are still a bit “up in the air.”

Born and raised on a farm near Ogallala, Sister Krajewski was one of six girls who learned to do chores both inside and outside the house. As the fifth out of six girls and one of the youngest, she would often help her mom inside, where she learned to bake.      “My mom was a great baker and ... with six girls on the farm, dad always made sure one of us was in the house to help.”     But that didn’t mean she didn’t learn to help outside on the farm as well, learning to drive a tractor and truck and irrigate, too, among many other chores.

She attended a K-4th grade country school taught by Dominican Sisters, not far from their farm. It was there that she was inspired to become a teacher. Oftentimes on the farm, she said the Dominican teachers would visit and sometimes stay for dinner or “ride bikes and feed the horses.” She learned at a young age, they weren’t scary people.     “To me they were just like one of us,” she said.

She attended St. Luke’s in Ogallala through the eighth grade. When she was older, Sister Krajewski said she was taught by the Ursulines at St. Patrick’s High School in Sidney. She said the Ursulines played an important role in her life.     “They were very good to me and I looked up to them.”

She then attended Kearney State College and remembered one Mass very vividly, recalling a woman challenging those who were attending the Newman Center to seriously think about religious life. Even though she had always thought she would get married and have children, she said, “It began to well up in my heart.”

She went on to graduate from Kearney State College with a degree in elementary education and a minor in physical science. After college, she traveled to Louisville to visit the Ursuline Sisters, accompanied by her dad and youngest sister, Louise. She also visited the Dominican order, but was drawn to the Ursulines. She was accepted into the order in 1975 and made her final vows in 1980.   

Except for one year when she taught at North Platte, she taught in Louisville for 30 years until returning to Ogallala in 2005 to help take care of her dad. She began teaching at St. Luke’s School that year, the same year that Father Ernest began as pastor.     “She has been a great leader at St. Luke’s,” said Greg Logsdon, Superintendent for the Diocese of Grand Island. “Sister Krajewski has been a leader in the diocese as a curriculum innovator for the grade schools of the diocese.”

Sister Krajewski said she has also enjoyed working with the faculty, wherever she has been teaching.     “I’ve really enjoyed working with teachers, parents and children at every place I’ve been,” she said. “My faculty now that I have, we work very good as a team because we are so small, we help one another out.”

Sr. Krajewski said she hopes that her next ministry continues to be with children, whether that turns out to be something in a hospital or a school. She said she has always enjoyed teaching music, something that was instilled in her as a young girl, beginning with piano lessons in the first grade.     “We all had piano lessons, we had them though high school,” she said about herself and her sisters. “My dad made sure we had music lessons and that we had those kinds of things.”

In addition to music and teaching, she said she also enjoys sewing. Over the past several years, she has donated several quilts to children in a very poor area of West Virginia.

But now that she’s planning retirement, she said she is looking forward to it as well as being around other community members.     “I feel it’s the right time and it’s the right thing to do.”