Sister M. Stella Dwyer, IHM

Sister M. Stella Dwyer, IHM, of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary died on Wednesday, November 8, 1933, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Carbondale, PA.

She was born on July 17, 1887 in New York City, NY, and given the name Cecilia. She was the daughter of Mary Driscoll Dwyer and the late James J. Dwyer. She entered the IHM Congregation in February 1916, and received the religous habit on August 2, 1916.

Sister Stella served as a teacher at St. Cecilia Academy in Scranton, PA. She also served as a Latin professor at Marywood College in Scranton, PA.

In addition to her mother Mary Dwyer of Brooklyn, NY, she is also survived by two sisters, Irene Lally of Hoboken, NJ, and Mary Carroll of Orange, NJ, a brother, Edward of New York, nieces and nephews.

The funeral will be Saturday, November 11 at 9:30 a.m. in the chapel at Marywood College in Scranton, PA. Interment will follow at St. Catherine’s Cemetery in Moscow, PA. Friends may call on Friday after 2:00 p.m. at Marywood College.

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Arcival Remembrance:

In 1919, Sister Stella received her teaching degree and the college teachers certificate along with 18 other women (four of them being women religious), as part of the first graduating class at Marywood College in Scranton, Pennsylvania. After receiving her degree from Hunter College, she taught at schools located in Brooklyn, NY, for several years before her entrance to the novitiate at Marywood.

After making her vows, she taught at St. Cecilia Academy in Scranton, PA, for several years.

Sister Stella, who was well known as an educator, was in the eighteenth year of her religious life at the time of her death and had spent a greater part of that period as an instructor at Marywood College.

Besides being an insturcor of Latin at the college, she was in charge of several clubs and was a n active director of the Children of Mary. She had the happy faculty of inspiring her pupils with the lofty aims by which she herself was inspire. The best testimony to her success is the work of the pupils who were trained by her.

“The Conferring of Degrees on the First Graduates of Marywood College

The next greatest event in the history of the college was the conferring of degrees on its first class. The exercises of commencement week began June 15, 1919, with Solemn High Mass celebrated in the college chapel.

Degrees were conferred on the Misses Kathleen Howley, Madeleine Larkin, Marie Joyce, Geraldine Burke, Marie Fleming, Marie Orr, Mary Groeszinger, Frances Canfield, Mary Lynott, Katharine Gavin, Regina Sullivan, Mary Sheridan, Mildred Walker, Sister M. Louis Mills, Sister M. Harriet Hillis, Sister M. Justitia Downes, and Sister M. Stella Dwyer.

The graduates also received the College Teachers Certificate, for which they had qualified.”

Excerpted from The Sisters of the I.H.M.: The Story of The Founding of The Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and Their Work In The Scranton Diocese by Sister M. Immaculata Gillespie, IHM, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, NY, 1921, pgs. 421, 422