Reflections
By Sister Marian R. Christensen

These words, found on an anonymous poster hanging in her room, seem to epitomize Sister Estelle’s life and purpose in these last years. When she was sleepless at night her voice could be heard repeating these words over and over. She lived to pray, and to draw closer to her God.

Helen Teresa Hains was born on October 26, 1909 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, which then was Indian Territory. Her father, Henry Hains, was there as part of the Dawes Commission, registering Native Americans. Since his trip was taking longer that expected, her mother, Estelle Schneider Hains, "got lonesome for him and went down from Kansas City for a visit. That’s when I was born." They soon went back to Kansas City with the new baby, there to re-join with little Helen’s brother, John, who was then a toddler. Charles was born later in California.

When Helen was five years old, the family moved to California, in order to join her uncle Ed Schneider in his chicken ranch business. She says, " while we were on the train traveling to California, a massive flood hit Baldwin Park, devastating the land and ruining my uncle’s property. Instead we settled in Los Angeles and my father began his work with the Immigration Service."

The Hains family was a faith-filled Catholic family, with strong ties to finding and following the Will of God. "Mass was never neglected, nor were evening devotions at home. My parents were both well-educated. My mother taught in a country school before she married, and my father, with his degree in Latin/Greek classics taught in Jesuit colleges for some years before coming to California. He was also an accomplished musician. Our home was filled with good books – sets of Shakespeare and Dickens, and other good literature, including volumes of poetry. And, of course, we had a Bible, Lives of the Saints, and other devotional books."

The family finally settled in Altadena, where Helen went to public schools until, when she was in the fifth grade, St. Elizabeth’s School opened.

It was there that she first met the Sisters of the Holy Names. She found the sisters to be "beautiful examples of consecrated life."

During her four years at St. Andrew’s High School, her inclinations toward religious life grew and were encouraged. There she joined the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, and taught religion classes in public schools every Saturday and in the summer.

In July after graduation from St. Andrew’s she entered the novitiate in Oakland. In her letter to Mother Angeline asking for permission to enter, she states that, "the only offering I can make is but to promise to make every effort to be faithful to the great grace of my vocation." Novitiate was a time of "happiness and great graces." Reminiscing later she would often say how she "loved the novitiate." ( That’s a vocation!) The graduating class of 1927 from St. Andrew’s was the one from which six of the seven graduates entered our novitiate. (The others were Sisters Regina Sullivan, Virginia Ann, Miriam Elizabeth, Peter Francis, and Grace Marie.)

In her autobiography, Estelle says, "After my novitiate I taught for 50 years and loved it. I enjoyed teaching both boys and girls but was always assigned to boys’ athletics, boys’ choir, boys’ sodality. I was blest with energy and good health, so I could do all of this with enthusiasm." She taught mostly the eighth grade and mostly in southern California, except for St. Augustine’s and St. Anselm’s. In L.A., she taught at St. Monica’s, St. Anne’s, St. Mary’s Boyle Heights, All Souls, St. Elizabeth’s, St. Gerard Majella’s, and Ramona Convent. She was also Principal at St. Anne’s and St. Mark’s, while teaching 8^th grade, of course. Sister Estelle seemed to have a knack for interesting these eight-graders, especially the boys, in poetry and drama. Shakespeare became a good friend of these boys. In recent years I have had the opportunity to talk to many of them – all retired now – and they say she was the best teacher they had in all of their schooling, through high school, college, and graduate school. What a legacy!

After elementary school teaching she taught English in the Ramona Convent Junior School, while also acting as Local Leader for the sisters in the convent. So again, double duty.

At the same time with all the teaching and administration and extra-curricular activities, Sister Estelle did what today we would call "social work." She had a special feeling for the poor and disadvantaged, whom she felt were God’s chosen. She continued this closeness after retirement by praying with great vigor for the Santee Project in San Jose. The sisters involved in Santee now know they have a special advocate in heaven.

After leaving her teaching ministry, Estelle spent one year at our House of Prayer, at the same time working part time in our Infirmary. Then she was called upon for another leadership position: Local Leader of what is now Marian Community here at Los Gatos. For six years she looked after the needs of the sisters on the third floor of our care center.

After a short sabbatical of three months at the Desert House of Prayer at Cortaro, Arizona, she spent three years on the staff at Villa Maria del Mar Retreat House in Santa Cruz. Then it was on to the staff at Holy Names College Convent to be a watchdog, overseeing the medical insurance for all of the sisters living there.

Finally, in 1995, she retired and came to live here at Los Gatos. These last few years seem to have been a time of further mellowing, and a time of deep prayer. We found a little prayer card in among her prayer books. These are the things she prayed for daily:

     sisters’ personal lives
          with Christ
          their works
          their joys
     children
     teenagers
     marriageable and young married
     young families
     growing families
     families with parental difficulties
          infidelity
          severe temptations
          break-ups
      deaths
     adults who don’t marry
     criminals
          big ones
          small ones
     broken-hearted
          mothers
          wives
          husbands
          fathers
     children neglected
     children who neglect parents
     selfish
          men
          women
          children
     And down in the corner in a circle: & all I have forgotten

From her autobiography, she writes: "God has blessed me with rich and rewarding friendships, which have taught me much. I am grateful to my family, my Community, my friends, and lay people I have known. Most of all I am grateful to God for His faithful and abiding love. My life was quite uneventful, but satisfying."

When we lived together at the College, Sister Estelle encouraged me to take more courses in poetry and do more writing of poetry than I had done in recent years. We both loved Wordsworth; I’d like to read one of his short poems now. This speaks to me of Estelle.

I wandered lonely as a Cloud

                          That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,

                          When all at once I saw a crowd

                          A host of dancing Daffodils;

                          Along the Lake, beneath the trees,

                          Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

                          The waves beside them danced, but they

                          Outdid the sparkling waves in glee: --

                          A Poet could not but be gay

                          In such a laughing company:

                          I gazed – and gazed – but little thought

                          What wealth the show to me had brought.

                          For oft when on my couch I lie

                          In vacant or in pensive mood,

                          They flash upon that inward eye

                          Which is the bliss of solitude,

                          And then my heart with pleasure fills,

                          And dances with the Daffodils.