Clinton Franciscan Sr. Bertha Zeiser (Sisters of St. Francis, Clinton, Iowa)
Over the course of nearly six decades, I have known hundreds of sisters from attending Catholic schools to volunteering with religious communities.
The best way I found to really become acquainted with sisters, though, is by recording their personal oral histories.
As an inadvertent archivist without any formal training I d been tackling the reorganization of the Mission San Luis Rey archives in Oceanside, California, as a full-time volunteer from 2012 to 2013. I met members of the Sisters of St. Francis, Clinton, Iowa, who were ministering in San Diego, and was asked to lend my skills to their archives at the motherhouse.