The year was 1949, and Mary Ann Carey had ordered matching bedspreads with her roommate-to-be. She couldn't wait to go to college. She had wanted to be a nurse as long as she remembered.
 
As she made final plans for the move to Marycrest College in Davenport, Iowa, though, Mary Ann received devastating news. Her mother had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer that had already metastasized to the brain and bone. Instead of learning nursing in college, Mary Ann stayed home to nurse her mom and care for her family.
 
"While other young women my age were attending classes, I was chauffeuring my brother and sister around," she remembers. "I was a Cub Scout den mother and a member of the Junior Women's Club. I was dating a very nice young man who I thought I might marry."
 
When Mary Ann's mother died in November, she stayed on to care for the family. Two years later, though, she moved to Joliet, Ill., to take a job with Caterpillar as a keypunch operator and enjoy the life of a young carefree adult.
 
Mary Ann's Wild Year
 
"My dad had remarried, and had encouraged me to go to college," she says. "But I had gone through so much, caring for my mom, that I decided I couldn't be a nurse. Working at Caterpillar was great fun. My friends and I used to go to Chicago to see plays all the time. We'd go to jazz clubs, and get a sandwich and a pitcher of beer. We'd catch the last bus back to Joliet.
 
"One night we caught the train to LaSalle/Peru to see a band we really liked. We missed the last train back, so we rented a hotel room for the night. Trouble was, we were supposed to report for work at nine the next morning. We had already been late enough that we worried we'd lose our jobs if we came in late again.
 
"So we pooled our money and called the airport the next morning to see if a private plane would fly us back. A pilot there said he would do it. So we got to work on time, although we were wearing the same clothes we had on yesterday. But I was thrilled. It was my first time in an airplane."
 
The Fork in the Road
 
Attending night school classes to learn more computer skills, Mary Ann advanced in the company. Soon she was wiring the boards to keep factory inventory and do payroll accounting. But Mary Ann's "wild year" was winding down. She was starting to want something more.
 
"My family had always been quite religious, so it was natural for me to choose to go on a retreat during the annual company summer shutdown," she says. "I went to the Benedictines and had a prayerful and peaceful time. I wondered what it would be like to be a nun. They all looked so happy."
 
Despite her religious upbringing, Mary Ann had never thought of becoming a Sister before.
 
"After that retreat, though, I couldn't get the idea out of my mind. I prayed about it and discussed it with my father, who was very pleased. I wrote to several communities for information and even visited another group. But the Benedictines were for me. I valued their quiet happiness."
 
Mary Ann left her job and entered the community - to the surprise of many - in 1952. She became Sister Helen Carey in 1953.
 
"I had all kinds of friends say, You'll never last,'" she chuckles. "I guess they were wrong."
 
  Sr. Helen Carey, OSB, did end up attending college! She earned her BA in English, and her MA and PhD in philosophy. After a career in teaching, campus ministry and hospital chaplaincy - where Sr. Helen got as near to nursing as she ever again wished to be - she currently leads a book discussion group, writes, and is developing a women's retreat for June from her home at the monastery.