We knew her as sister and friend. A paradox: she was scarcely five feet tall; a strong wind might have blown her away. Spiritually she was a giant. “What you see is what you get,” she said. She was “up front,” with no hidden agenda. An introvert who loved people, she had a deep loyalty to her friends, her family, her community, and to Dominican High School where she served for almost thirty years. She was an intensely private person, but when a situation called for it she was animated, and bounding with energy. She took on and balanced a superhuman workload, even though, despite her best efforts, her health was compromised at an early age. She knew how to pace herself, never complained, and never until the cancer finally gained the upper hand did she appear burdened. Even then her sense of humor did not fail. She wasted nothing, certainly not time, and least of all words. She was calm, restrained, at the same time capable of a fiery passion for what was right. She was born to organize, to manage, with her keen insight into situations and groups. Working with people, as she did more when her people-skills were honed with experience and she awakened to her power, she never lost sight of the individual, and that person’s worth, as if she had God’s own vision. She was generous. (One day I showed her a rocker I got for eight dollars at a yard sale down the street; she took one look and said “I’ll refinish it for you.” She did, to perfection.) She had contemplative hours in her “shop” where she created and fixed things for others with consummate skill.

Carolyn grew up with loving parents, an older, and then a younger brother. Her father had his own school where she excelled in “acrobatics, adagio and tumbling.” At nine she had an award for excellence, and at fifteen a diploma for having completed the course. She started as an infant, already an athlete, wanting to do everything her older brother did, and for that got the nickname “Butch” which clung to her through high school. She did all things well; if she had been born into a later generation she would have been a candidate for the Olympics. Like many Olympic gymnasts she sustained repetitive knee injury, but it never held her back from any thing she set out to do.

Academically Carolyn was a late bloomer, which may have kept her humble, although in a community of high achievers her self-image was always intact. She began as an average student, and enrolled at Dominican High School on a band scholarship. It was only later, in courses on the graduate level that she excelled. Still she never pursued an advanced degree, but amassed an impressive collection of carefully selected workshops in management and organization, any one of which she could have given once she completed it. She was a genius at applying theory. She was a master teacher, not only in the classroom, but having volunteered for supervising congregational maintenance, in teaching workers how to work efficiently. Many remember, and visitors remarked at the sparkle of Dominican’s buildings. Her students cannot forget her.

After her first mission at Belle Chasse, LA, she went to Waveland, MS in 1965, surviving the hurricane that demolished the entire parish plant in 1969. The account of the Gulf Coast community rebuilding the school was one of the few things she saved, although "you needed to be there," said Sister Ruth Angelette, who was principal. One of young Sister Ambrose’ early joys was to have her flag drill team chosen for the VFW summer parade. Awards, trophies, honors followed in profusion, while she kept her eye only on the prize of Eternal Love.