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Date: 9/17/2015
WEST SPRINGFIELD – Where there is a will, there is a way, and Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart dedicated hours of her time this spring to restoring several of the outdoor statues on the sprawling grounds of the Dominican Monastery of the Mother of God.
“I decided to undertake this project because I felt we would lose some of them,” Sister Mary said. “St. Gabriel and the Guardian Angel statues were so bad as was the base of the Sacred Heart statue. After doing them the rest seemed easy.”
While Sister Mary did the majority of the repairs and restorations, she also credits several sisters including Sister Mary Emmanuel and Sister Mary of the Word Incarnate, as well as Lenny Bushee and Cameron Cooley from the maintenance department, for their willingness to assist her.
“While working on the St. Gabriel statue, Sister Mary Emmanuel assisted me when I was on the ladder by handing the wing to me while testing for the correct placement,” Sister Mary said. “Once I applied the bondo, she then lifted it up to me again. Sister Mary of the Word Incarnate was all the while standing in front of the statue directing me for the placement and angle of the wing. Then it was a matter of trying to keep it in place while the bondo hardened.”
Sister Mary noted her first attempt at reattaching the wing did not hold and she had dismissed her helpers during the waiting/hardening process.
“Without my helpers I managed to steady the wing in place with some tape,” she said. “It took a few attempts to do it but I was finally successful. It did mean climbing up and down the ladder to make sure it was placed properly. Then I mixed another batch of bondo and put more hardening in it. That time it took and I left the tape on the wing for insurance purposes.”
The final stage of St. Gabriel’s work required attaching pieces of cement and rebuilding the statue with quikrete cement.
A statue of St. Michael was also another large undertaking by Sister Mary.
“We originally had a cement statue of St. Michael but it had fallen into such disrepair that it had been replaced with a fiberglass statue,” she said. “The statue was not firmly attached to its base and the wind had blown it off twice.”
Sister Mary noted that Bushee had reattached St. Michael’s wing using screws and bolts to reinforce it, while she finished the job of patching the cracks with bondo and then used white spray paint where the bondo had been used.
“There was a question as to whether St. Michael would be returned to his stone base but with some research, Lenny devised a plan of action,” she said. “He and Cameron remounted St. Michael on his base.”
The cement statues were donated by Sister Mary of the Blessed Sacrament Tierney’s family in 1930.
Sister Mary noted she took time to research how to repair the statues, including how to use the bondo for reattaching broken parts, and using quikrete cement for sections that required replacing pedestals.
“It is amazing what you can do with some instruction, guidance and encouragement from YouTube,” she said. “Attitude is a big factor and the YouTube video gave both the instruction and confidence needed for the job.”
As Sister Mary’s expertise grew, she soon found that she would also have time to mend several other statues including the Guardian Angel with a child at his side, St. Dominic’s statue that had a cracked skull, and the Angel Raphael that also had suffered from a lost chunk of his skull. Also, Our Lady of Lourdes statue had damage at the base and the pedestal was in disrepair, and the Sacred Heart statue’s pedestal was “probably the worst” for being in need of repair.
Before repairs could be tackled with any of the statues, Sister Mary cleaned each one with soapy water, bleach and a lot of elbow grease. By the end of the summer, Sister Mary could look back at the 12 statues she worked on with a sense of pride.
“It was a joy to me to be able to accomplish this,” she said. “I had never done any repair work of this nature and scope. The more I did the easier it got and the more confidence I got.”
Sister Mary added that the novices who have gardens at some of the shrines were especially happy.
“The repair work also gave the Sisters a lot of joy,” she said.
While Sister Mary can’t put a price tag on what the cost would have been to her community to have a professional complete the work, she knew her time spent on YouTube learning the tricks of the trade was worth every minute.
“I doubt that the community would have been able to pay for them to be restored,” she said.
For more information on the Dominican Monastery of the Mother of God, built in 1956, call 736-3639 or visit www.vocationws.com.