Daniel Berrigan Walt Whitman Martin Sheen Nick Virgilio Edwina Gateley Mother Theresa Thich Naht Hahn Mairead Corrigan Mick Maloney Eugene O’Donnell Barbara Dever Harry Reasoner Othmar Carli Sister Peg Hynes Cesar Chavez Eileen Egan Paddy Doherty Michael Flatley Tommy Sands Lester Conner Father Des Wilson
FAMOUS FACES AT SACRED HEART
SISTER PEG HYNES
She was born in Philadelphia on June 7, 1933, the second of the five daughters of Nellie Burke and Tom Hynes, emigrants from Gort, County Galway. She received her first four sacraments and her grammar school education at St. Columba’s at 24th and Lehigh. Then on to Hallahan High, a star student all the way in books and basketball, swimming and softball. At 21, she entered the Sisters of St. Joseph in Chestnut Hill, received degrees from Chestnut Hill College and Boston College and became a first class teacher and principal in several Catholic schools.
In 1986, after 30 years in education, she became the director of The Heart of Camden Housing in South Camden, New Jersey and spent the next sixteen years trying to provide home ownership for poor people. Her work in housing and social service made her in the eyes of many the mother of the poor “the heart” of Camden. She strove, as the poet proclaimed, “to give a life to a dream, a dream, that was dreamed in the heart and only the heart could hold.” It wasn’t easy. But she could say
What if the dream come true?
And if millions unborn shall dwell
In the house that I shaped in my heart,
The noble house of my thought?
Padraig Pearse
She died on the darkest day, December 21, 2002. Now that “noble house” has the light on.
God grant her eternal rest!
Click here Read A Month’s Mind Reflection on Sister Peg Hynes, by Gail Gooney