Mildred Marie Roques
November 28, 1915 - August 28, 2003
Mildred was the first of nine children of Aline Ordeneaux and Alban Roques. After her came five brothers in a row, and to the end of her days she delighted in telling their names in her peerless French: Theophile, Achille, Pascal... it was a lyrical chant. As the only girl of the first six, she was the darling of her father. When he died, she grew even closer to her mother. She believed that helping care for younger brothers and sisters prepared her for working with the children she taught for forty-six years in Dominican elementary schools.
For the first four grades, Mildred went to a private one-room school, all in French, her first language. A gifted student, she learned English in fifth grade, attending public school in Paulina through the tenth grade, and graduated from Lutcher High School at sixteen. She had become an expert seamstress, but it was the Great Depression, and she could not get work.
The Dominican sisters opened St. Joseph School in 1935, and Mildred went to work helping them. A government program, the National Youth Administration, paid her for a few hours per month to help at the school. On her own time, she helped also at the convent, drawing on her talent for sewing and her many other skills. The more she knew the sisters, the more she was drawn to join them, and at twenty-two, she left her close family for the novitiate, writing, "I am not needed at home, and am free to leave whenever I choose." The novitiate had been in New Orleans since 1860. In 1939 it was transferred from the motherhouse to Rosaryville, north of Lake Pontchartrain. Rural life was familiar to her from growing up on the River Road. She could even "coach" some of the "city girls" among her peers.
Sister Mary Juliana spent most of her years teaching fifth grade in Dominican schools. Teaching five years (1948-53) in a public school in Lizana, Mississippi, was a novel experience for her. In the summer missions, and in classes after school, she prepared uncounted numbers of public school children for the sacraments.
Sister Mary Juliana was intellectually and artistically gifted, and a successful teacher. Dr. Mary Ann Becnel, an experienced professional educator and loyal friend, remembers her as a teacher who greatly inspired her. Juliana was passionately dedicated to educating "the whole child" as she says eloquently in a brief autobiography. Her great love was teaching French to children. She began it as an extra-curricular at Holy Ghost in Hammond in 1968, and in 1983 saw conversational French integrated into the curriculum "one of the most delightful experiences of my teaching career."
Sister Mary Juliana was creative and artistic to a high degree. Samples of her sewing, crocheting, and handwork are treasured by those blessed to have acquired them. Each is a work of perfection.
She reflected, twenty or more years ago,
"Since my first year of teaching, I have always felt that education is life. Every child has a right to an adequate education... Before all else, he has the right to know God, and what is demanded of him as a child of God."
Since the full life is that in which the capacities for creative self-expression have been developed to the highest point ... it is the responsibility of the school to organize curriculum [accordingly]. The home, the church, the school, and the community have distinct roles to play... All must work together toward their common end, which is the spiritual, physical, mental, and moral individual and social development of the child. It is the duty of the school to serve all the other agencies by educating him to be a good family member, a good Christian, a good American, and a prospective citizen of heaven... I must cooperate in every way with the family, the church, and the community in guiding his growth... "What I sow today in the hearts of children will bear fruit in their tomorrow, in all life's tomorrows, and in the eternal years."
Juliana was among those "who instruct others to justice, and who shine as stars for all eternity." Daniel, 12:3.
