A special place in history: Freshmen at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College have ties to St. Theodora Guerin (The Criterion)
Posted on: 09/24
By John Shaughnessy
SAINT MARY-OF-THE-WOODS—For cousins Jena Thralls and Ashley Vermillion, it’s just a short walk from their college dorm room to the site of their family’s special place in American Catholic history.
At night on the campus of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College west of Terre Haute, Jena and Ashley sometimes walk to the rock that memorializes a historic October moment from 168 years ago—the moment in 1840 when St. Theodora Guérin ended a three-month journey from France and arrived in the Indiana wilderness with a dream.
Standing by that rock, the two freshmen have sometimes imagined what it must have been like in that moment for St. Theodora and the five other sisters who traveled with her from France. Even more, the 18-year-old cousins have tried to imagine what it was like for their great-great-great-great-grandparents as they welcomed into their home the woman who in 2006 would be just the eighth person from America to become a saint. Read more...
