Sister Mary St. Pius was born in the state of Washington she christened Barbara May and she came to Trona when she was very young. Her father, Frank May was employed as an engineer for AP&CC. He was involved with borax refining and was also a photographer.
She became a nun after graduation from college around 1955 and went to the Monastery of the Angels in Hollywood, CA. She spent over 65 years of her life there and served as their archivist As the number of there nuns dwindled down to four or five the Church relocated the few remaining nuns and closed the monastery in January 2024.
When she was 5 she started kindergarten in the old Trona Elementary School that was turned into a department store. Of the twenty-five students she graduated with there were six of them that had started kindergarten with her.
Marlene came to Trona during her senior year. She was living with her aunt and her cousins, Gary Casy (1936-2003), class of 1954 and Jon Casey (1941-1994), class of 1960.
Our condolences to her family.
Her Obituary Reads:
Marlene Morris, age 92, of Amarillo, entered the gates of heaven on August 5, 2023, in Amarillo.
Marlene was born July 29, 1931, in Dodge City, Kansas, to her parents, Albert Eugene and Dora Shirley Hurt Casey. She attended Amarillo High School before moving to California, where she graduated high school and attended college.
On August 21, 1953, Marlene married the love of her life, Gene “Smokey” Morris. The couple was blessed with four children Mike, Sam, Susan, and Abby. Marlene devoted her life to serving her family, the church, and the community. She was involved in the Republican Women’s Organization, the Red Hat Society, the Borger Belles and served in many capacities at her church.
Marlene had an extensive knowledge and appreciation of history. Being a child of the Great Depression and living through WWII, she took an interest in the times that shaped her life. She was an accomplished artist, blessing family and friends with her exquisite oil paintings.
She was preceded in death by a son, Richard Michael Morris, and her husband, Gene “Smokey” Morris.
Marlene is survived by her two daughters, Susan Denton and her husband David of Wimberley and Abby Johnston and her husband Cliff of Kyle; her son, Sam Morris of Amarillo; seven grandchildren, John Mark Davis and his wife Mallory, Michelle Myers and her husband Jason, Matthew Davis and his wife Madison, Michael Davis, Daniel Davis and his wife Anna, Lauren Hogan and Jacky Morris; and five great-grandchildren, Kamron Davis, Khloe Davis, Olivia Davis, Luna Davis, and Baby Myers, on the way.
The family suggests memorial donations be made to the American Heart Association, https://www.heart.org/.
HOLLYWOOD — Sister Mary Pia, wearing a threadbare habit, spoke from behind the bars of her gated parlor about the boundless power of prayer.
“Hollywood is the Babylon of the U.S.A.,” she said. “For people who need prayers, we have to be here.”
Just two long blocks from her monastery, you are in the thick of the electric lights of Hollywood Boulevard: among the dopers, the runaways, the surgically augmented, the homeless, the sex salesmen.
Sister Mary Pia, as pale and innocent as an uncooked loaf, prays for all of them, while knowing virtually nothing about them. There is nothing ironic about this, she believes: “One doesn’t need to be of it to know of it.”
Indeed, in her 56 years at the Monastery of the Angels, she has ventured out no more than a few dozen times to attend religious retreats or make preparations for dying loved ones. Rarely has she set a shoe onto the stained sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard.
Yet the signs of iniquity are everywhere. Police helicopters routinely hover over the cloister. There is the dull roar of the Hollywood Freeway. The head of the monastery’s statue of St. Martin de Porres has been stolen twice. Neighbors recently complained so loudly about the belfry’s morning chimes to prayer that the authorities forced the peals silent.
“I think we pricked their conscience,” she said of the neighbors. “Is 7 o’clock too early to get up?”
Two Worlds, Two Windows A Hollywood wig shop, and Sisters Mary St. Pius and Mary Pia in a visitors room at the Monastery of the Angels. “Hollywood is the Babylon of the U.S.A.,” Sister Mary Pia says.Credit…Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Sister Mary Pia is one of 21 Dominican nuns cloistered in this walled complex of stucco and steel. From a distance, the place looks more like a loading dock than a religious retreat.
They do no missionary work here, canvass no alleys, cook in no soup kitchen. Prayer is the occupation. Until recently there were 23 nuns, but Sister Mary the Pure Heart and Sister Mary Rose were sent to a convalescent home because there were not enough youthful and vigorous nuns to care for them.
The sisterhood is a dying way of life in America. Forty years ago, the United States had about 180,000 nuns. Today there are perhaps 70,000. Fewer than 6,000 are younger than 50. There are estimated to be about 5,000 cloistered, contemplative nuns, a piece of women’s history that may be on the way out.
Reasons for the collapse can be traced to the mid-1960’s: the flowering of the women’s movement, which broadened opportunities beyond secretary, housewife, nurse, teacher and nun. But the Roman Catholic Church unintentionally inflicted damage on itself when it ratified the Second Vatican Council.
“Basically it said that religious women were no more holy than lay women,” said Sister Patricia Wittberg, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. “It was devastating.”
Still, the sisters of the Angels, frail and birdlike, go on with a vocation to which they sacrificed their youth: perhaps never to have known a man, never to have rowed the banks of the Seine, never to have taken a moonlight drive. High heels and self-adornment were given up after high school graduation.
As a young woman, Sister Mary Pia might have become an opera singer. Sister Mary St. Peter, 78, the daughter of a Protestant, thought of becoming a nurse. Sister Mary St. Pius was good at photography. They gave away these things, without regret, for something they say is incalculable.
The average age at the Monastery of the Angels is about 70. From this generation also came feminists like Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug. Hugh Hefner, too, is of their era, as was the centerfold pinup Bettie Page. This generation helped create the cultural chasm that divides America today.
“It’s a materialistic age,” said Sister Mary Pia, gray now, her eyes milky with years. “For young women, religion is far down on the list.”
Sister Mary Pia grew up in the Wilshire District of Los Angeles and joined the monastery at 17, despite the tears of her parents. Prayer, she said, had delivered her brother home from the South Pacific battlefields, and so, seeing the power in it, she dedicated her life to God. She became a novitiate in 1950, years before the birth of rock ’n’ roll.
“I’ve heard of Alex Presley,” she offered. “But I wouldn’t know his music.”
Sister Mary St. Peter gave over her life in 1947, six years before the founding of Playboy magazine. “I never heard of Hugh Hefner,” she said with a shrug in the cloister’s front garden.
Sister Mary St. Pius, who arrived in 1953 from a small town in the Mojave Desert [Trona], does not know the work of the political satirist Jon Stewart. But after a brief moment, she squealed: “Martha Stewart? Oh, yes!”
Asked about Father John Geoghan, the Boston priest and serial molester who was the catalyst of the sex scandal that rocked the Catholic Church, the sisters went blank-eyed.
When told about him, Sister Mary Pia’s eyes became flinty, flashing defiance. She said she believed that one of the last respectable prejudices in America was that against the Catholics, and that the news coverage of abusive priests had been excessive, almost joyful.
“You get a little tired of all the bad news,” she said. “The media,” she wrinkled her nose, as if catching a whiff of a bad onion. “They never write about the good things.”
The important thing, then, is that there are still old women in America with the charity to care about something more than themselves, about strangers, even if they do not know those strangers’ manias and motivations. But take a walk down the boulevard any evening, and one wonders whether their prayers are reaching the intended destination.
“That’s the meaning of faith,” Sister Mary Pia said.
This article is from the archives of The New York Times. I can imagine most readers wondering why I reprinted here? The answer is simple. Sister Mary St. Pius mentioned in this article was born Barbara May. She graduated from Trona High School in 1950 and was the yearbook photographer. I’m trying to figure out how I can find out if she is still alive. She is on linkedin.com and lis listed as the monastery acrivest. That is a good sign.
It has come to my attention, as the result of his sister’s recent death, that Jerry Wallace of the class of 1950 passed away July 21, 2005 in Vincennes, Knox, Indiana. He was the sister of Janice (Wallace) Draper who was also in the class of 1950. Please see Janice’s obituary for further details about his family.
Janice Irene Draper (lovingly called Mema by her family) was born on August 25, 1932 in Van Nuys, California. She died peacefully at her home in Rancho Cordova California surrounded by her family on August 20, 2019. She was five days away from turning 87 years old.
Her mother whom she loved dearly, Clifford “Cliffy” Richard Morgan, and father, Charles Roy Wallace and two brothers and Chuck and Jerry preceded her in death.
Her husband, Jimmie Elwood Draper, Sr. and her four boys, Jimmie Elwood Draper, Jr., Jeffrey Earl Draper, Darrell Wallace Draper, Sr., and Randy Craig Draper survive her in addition to her 17 grandchildren, 3 of which she helped raise, and 32 great grandchildren.
Janice grew up in California and graduated from Trona High School in 1950. Her brother gave her the nickname of Lalie, and it stuck with her school friends. She made lasting friendships during her school years and through her association with Job’s Daughters, an international youth organization for young women that fosters leadership, charity and character building. She was the elected as her Bethel’s Honored Queen and led the organization for her 6-month term.
After high school, and a few other moves she landed in Sacramento California and worked as a switchboard operator. During that time she met her future husband, Jimmie Draper down at Stan’s Drive in on 16th and K Street, the place where all the young folks used to hang out in the evenings. Jim was in his early 20s and was enlisted in the air force working at Mather as an aircraft electrician. According to Jim, they dated for about a week before he proposed marriage, they were married on June 21, 1953 at Mather Air force Base
Her mother told Jim before they got married, “She can rebuild a carburetor but she doesn’t know how to cook!” Janice taught herself how to cook and her sons how to rebuild carburetors, how to drag race and most importantly she taught them to love and serve the Lord.
Janice joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after marrying Jim and was baptized on June 6, 1959. They were later sealed in the Oakland Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an eternal family with their four sons on February 22, 1967.
Jim, Janice and their four boys moved to their current home in Rancho Cordova on May 1st 1968. They have been active and faithful members in their local ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (attending the same building) for over 51 years.
Janice brought life and vitality to any gathering. She was a dear and loyal friend to many, and had wonderful long-lasting relationships. Starting with her friends from High School in Trona whom she kept in touch with until the end. She also had many friends from her church community. They raised their families together, served in the Church together, sent their sons on missions and watched as they got married and raised their own families making her and Jim grandparents, and great grandparents.
Janice lived life with gusto. Among many things she will be remembered for:
• Loving animals, her family had dogs growing up and when she had her own family they raised crows, squirrels a cat and several dogs
• Playing all types of sports. Tennis, volleyball and softball. She was the ace pitcher for the church women’s softball team – she did all this well into her 50s
• Learning to play golf in her 50s with a used set of clubs from Deseret Industries. She even got TWO holes in one in her lifetime!
• Going about her church assignments riding her motorcycle, with her visiting teaching companion on the back
• Playing Shanghai rummy – and playing to win!
• Riding in off-road vehicles well into her 80s, telling her son to “go faster”
• Perfecting her fluffy dinner roll recipe – and many other amazing dishes.
• Loving to read and share paperback books amongst her friends.
Most importantly she will always be remembered for her love of family and her strong and abiding testimony of the Savior. She is a great example of enduring to the end with a sense of humor.
Gerald Smith “Jerry” Eyre died Oct. 15, 2012. He was 81.
Jerry was born July 15, 1931 in Lovell, Big Horn, Wyo. to Orton Berdette and Helen Lovevoize Smith Eyre. The Eyre family moved to Randsburg in 1935. Jerry was one of seven children. His father was employed at the famous Yellow Aster Gold Mine in Randsburg as a hard rock miner.
A strike closed the mine in 1940/1941, so the Eyre family moved to Ridgecrest and lived for a short time in one of the Joe Fox properties situated near what is now the IWV Water District office.
Jerry’s father found employment at the American Potash and Chemical Company in Trona, now called Searles Valley Minerals.
The family moved to Trona in 1942, where Jerry attended the Trona School System until he graduated from high school.
Jerry married Mary Ann Beach of Ridgecrest.
The marriage was blessed with three sons Jerry, Vince and Brad.
