Sister Agnes Cecilia Speak began a journey of 100 years on October 29, 1910, as Anne Cecilia, the third daughter of Joseph Lawrence and Apollonia Rhodes Speak of Irvington, Kentucky. Ultimately there would be five children growing up in the Speak family: Mary Joseph (our Sister Joseph Lawrence), Marie, Anne Cecilia (Sister Agnes Cecilia), Agnes the baby and a brother, Francis. Both Marie and Sister Agnes Cecilia would celebrate their 100th birthday. Sister Agnes Cecilia served at the Motherhouse and St. Catherine, New Haven, and St. Mary Home in Owensboro where they lived too far from the town for the girls to both live on the farm and attend a Catholic school; so the three older girls boarded with the Ursuline Sisters at St. Romuald and entered into their foundational experience of Ursuline life in Hardinsburg. Sister Agnes Cecilia remembers that they were “spoiled by the kindness of the Sisters which inspired a spark of Ursuline in her and her sister.” This arrangement ended when their father died in 1921. Her mother moved the family to Hardinsburg and the three girls “left the convent!” and lived at home.
On September 8, 1929, Anne Cecilia entered the novitiate at Mount Saint Joseph, August 14, 1930, and on Investment Day received the name Sister Agnes Cecilia. She made vows in 1932 and 1935 and for the next 80 years, she would touch many lives in 11 different missions. In her early years, she served for seven years in Kentucky at St. Charles in Bardwell, St. Bernard in Clementsville, and St. Anthony at Browns Valley. Then for the next seven years she experienced the New Mexico skies living and working at Sacred Heart Academy in Waterflow, and at St. Rose in Blanco. Back in Kentucky for another seven years, she witnessed the birth of Brescia College and at St. William, Knottsville. In 1953 she went to St. Angela home in Louisville to recuperate from surgery where she stayed and ministered for 19 years as housekeeper. Sister remembered those years as very happy “but they didn’t make a city dude out of me.” In 1972, she returned to western Kentucky and served for the next 23 year. She was a gourmet cook and an exceptionally gifted homemaker. Her quiet, gentle manner spoke loudly of God’s loving presence in her and around her.
She spent the last 15 years of her life at the Motherhouse. Only in 2007 did she move to St. Joseph Villa, and continued her usual loving support of those around her. Death came to her during Community Evening Prayer on December 15, 2010. Following the Wake Service and the Mass of Resurrection, Sister’s remains were buried in the Motherhouse cemetery.