BARLING — On March 17, 1991, then-82-year-old Sister Petronilla Coss, RSM, danced the Irish jig and told an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter, “I think there is no age for people who are forever young.”
On Sunday, Nov. 23, Sister Petronilla, still forever young, celebrated her 100th birthday at McAuley Convent, surrounded by five nieces and nephews from Ireland and New Jersey, the sisters in her congregation, former students, friends and convent nursing staff members.
Nephew Joe Donohue, visiting from Dublin, told her, “Although you are thousands of miles away, we always felt close to you. You wrote to us very often and endeared yourself to us. We thank you for showing love and kindness to us.”
Sister Petronilla’s niece, Sister Deanna Donohue, a Missionary Sister of Our Lady of Apostles, felt a special bond to the aunt who preceded her in religious life. Sister Deanna served in African missions for 30 years, returning to Ireland recently to work with the Sisters of Mercy in a substance abuse program in Athy, County Kildare.
Fort Smith Mayor Ray Baker came to shower Sister Petronilla with roses, and even the president of Ireland sent a special greeting. Her birthday also was announced on Irish National Radio.
Sister Petronilla, the seventh of 12 children born to Denis and Katie Kilbride Coss in Castletown, County Laoise, Ireland, in 1908, volunteered to join the Sisters of Mercy in the missionary Diocese of Little Rock when she was only 16. After completing high school at Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock, she entered religious formation and took her final vows on Aug. 21, 1932.
Her 53-year teaching career was spent in St. Patrick School and Immaculate Conception School, North Little Rock; Our Lady of Good Counsel School, Little Rock; Mount St. Mary School, Little Rock; and St. John School, Hot Springs. She served in the dual capacity of principal and teacher for 33 of those 53 years.
“Whether as principal and teacher, or simply as a teacher at Mount St. Mary’s Grade School in Little Rock, my heart has always been in the classroom during my 53 years of love and dedication in the teaching profession from 1929 to 1985,” Sister Petronilla said.
She especially enjoyed sharing her Irish culture by dancing the Irish jig and “stepping lively” every St. Patrick’s Day.
Msgr. J. Gaston Hebert, who had learned English composition from Sister Petronilla in seventh and eighth grade at St. John School in Hot Springs, said, “She was by far the best English composition teacher I ever had. I later went on to get a master’s degree in English composition myself and even against all the professors I had in universities she was by far the best.”
Msgr. Hebert, who celebrated Mass for his former teacher at McAuley Convent before her birthday party, said, “She was an extraordinary woman in teaching the basics of the faith … I based most of my theology that I learned from her tutelage, primarily in the Baltimore Catechism.”
In a room decorated with green and yellow balloons, the colors of Ireland, Sister Petronilla greeted her guests, kissed and hugged their babies, enjoyed cake and celebratory champagne and beamed as she opened her gifts. The “forever young” sister was not quite up to dancing the jig, but her eyes still danced as she enjoyed a milestone that few people reach with the people she loved best.
