Mother Teresa Recalled With Admiration

Hearing the news of Mother Teresa’s death Friday, Judith Bowles recalled a commencement speech the Nobel Prize-winning nun delivered 15 years ago in Ventura County.

“Her whole message was about love and that everyone should do charitable things,” said Bowles, who was business manager of Thomas Aquinas College in 1982.

“She was to speak at Harvard the next day and someone asked her why she was speaking at such a little place and then going to such an international place,” Bowles said. “Mother Teresa replied that here on Earth, to her, there was no difference, and in heaven there was also no difference.”

Katie Masteller, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts that hot day in Ojai, also remembered Mother Teresa’s words and her philosophy about helping others.

“She talked about poor families in India and how they had such a great spirit because they valued life,” Masteller said. “They’re the kinds of things that if we remembered them, regardless of the work we would engage in, it would help us keep our perspective.”

Jim Twyman, who had been the college’s director of public affairs, said Mother Teresa gave him a gift during her visit to the small campus tucked away in the Ojai mountains.

“She gave me a little card with a palm of a hand on it,” Twyman remembered. “She wrote on it, ‘We are in the palm of God’s hand.’ I’ll keep that card all my life.”

Although she gave a lengthy speech, the one line that stood out for Twyman after all these years was when she told the graduates: “You should be a new light.”

Twyman said millions of people from all walks of life and different religions reached out to her.

“She met the people of our century no matter who they were . . . from the little boy in the hospital to Princess Diana,” Twyman said. “What an unusual circumstance that these two women from different [walks] of life die in the same week.”

From churches and charity groups throughout the county, the death of the diminutive nun was greeted with a mixture of sadness--because she will be sorely missed-- as well as happiness because of the path she paved.

“There is a feeling of joy that she completed 87 years and that she died peacefully and accomplished so much,” said Msgr. Patrick J. O’Brien of San Buenaventura Mission. “Mother Teresa accomplished her work on Earth and went home to the Lord. I’m sure she’ll hear, ‘Well done, good servant.’ ”

In Thousand Oaks, grade school girls at St. Paschal BaylonChurch sang songs to God after Msgr. Joseph George announced that Mother Teresa had died that morning in Calcutta.

After the 11 a.m. service, George said, “This is not a cause of sadness. Catholics rejoice when someone goes to heaven. What we should be doing is mourning a little for ourselves.”

Twelve-year-old Eric Mlinar expressed the sentiments of many of his classmates.

“She will be missed because she was a really good role model helping the poor,” Eric said.

In Calcutta in 1947, a middle-age nun named Sister Teresa ventured alone into the city’s slums to minister to the poorest of the poor, whom she liked to describe as “God, in his most distressing disguise.”

Mother Teresa was called by some “the saint of the gutters” because of her work among those on the edges of society, such as the lepers, homeless, AIDS victims and the poverty stricken.

The frail nun’s last months were marked by several medical difficulties, including a broken collarbone, malarial fever, a chest infection and heart problems.

At the Ventura County Rescue Mission in Oxnard, where dozens of homeless people were finishing lunch Friday afternoon, the news about Mother Teresa’s death came as a shock.

“She was a great example of how we should all be,” said John Larsen, who is in the mission’s recovery program and works in the kitchen to pay his way. “She did things other people wouldn’t do, like caring for the lepers and AIDS people.”

Mother Teresa has served as a model for the mission, which operates a residential recovery program and shelter for homeless men, and feeds approximately 450 people daily.

“Mother Teresa was not afraid to touch people--physically and spiritually,” said Carol Roberg, who opened the mission nine years ago with her husband. “And that’s sort of what we do here. The thing that characterized her life was love and, really, that’s what draws people to a rescue mission.”

Many who live at the mission say they felt a certain closeness with her because of the benefits they have reaped from the examples Mother Teresa set worldwide.

“She should be anointed into sainthood,” said Duncan McNair, who checks guests into the shelter every evening. “Mother Teresa was the original saint of the homeless.”

Others who work for local charity organizations agreed.

“For myself, personally, and for Food Share, Mother Teresa stands as a symbol of caring for those in need without asking questions. And that is really at the base of our mission,” said Jim Mangis, executive director of Food Share, Ventura County’s food bank. “I think she captured the attention of the world because so few people really live that credo of service to the fullest.”

* MAIN STORY: Nobel Prize winner dies at age 87. A1