Sister Inez Tunrmeyer, OSF
Director of St. Mark Community Center
TH executive editor
BC: Tell me about your family.
IT: Both of my parents are deceased. I have one brother and four sisters. I'm No. 2 of six. We grew up here in Dubuque. We remain close friends. We all did things together. My mom insisted that we all stay in the yard and play. We could have 100 friends over, but we had to stay in the yard so she knew where we were.
IT: Diagonal, which is right up from Fulton School. BC: What line of work were your parents in? Was your mom a stay-at-home mom?
IT: My mom (Rose) was definitely a stay-at-home person. Before that, she worked at Trenkel's (butcher shop) before she was married. The she stayed at home. My dad (John) worked at Weber Paper Co. Then when he left Weber Paper Co. - because of a layoff and he retired - he was part-time as a guard at American Trust. BC: If you didn't enter the religious life, what do you think you might have been?
IT: I still wanted to be a teacher. I love little kids. I suppose because I started babysitting at an early age, I knew that I liked kids and I wanted to work with students. I also knew that I wanted to work with the poorer ones, you know, the ones that didn't have quite the ability that other kids had. I guess I felt sorry in grade school for classmates that weren't quite up to par, didn't have what I had, didn't have the opportunities that I had at home and things like that and I guess I just wanted...I had a desire to serve, to work with people. BC: In speaking with other women in religious orders, there are some pretty interesting stories, I guess maybe isolation might the word. Was you situation where once you entered that you had a period where basically you didn't have family contact?
IT: Well, I was going to say we had family contact. We had the postulance, which was like the first nine months that we're in. It's called postulancy. Then from there, we went to the novitiate for two years. During that time, we would always have once-a-month visiting. But once we are professed, we got home once every five years. But it's kind of funny because my dad was Lutheran turned Catholic. When he took me to the convent, he said, "Well, what time tomorrow should I pick you up?" He just thought I was wasting my life, you know? Then every visiting Sunday, he made it hard because he'd say things like, "Well, you had enough now? Ready to go home?" I had some classmates that were from California and different places. They'd say, "Boy, it must be nice having your folks right here in town." And I'm saying, "Yes and no. It's harder because they're here, inviting me to keep coming home, where your folks are 2,000 miles away and you don't see them." It's just something that my dad didn't understand. But my mom was definitely all for it. Great privilege to have a sister in the family.