Martha Harris was born January 26, 1915, one of three children born to Harris Stites and Mary Martha Higginson Cargile in Dixon, Ky. She was baptized at St. Ann Church, Morganfield, on March 12, 1915, and received the sacrament of Confirmation on March 18,1934, in the chapel of Mount Saint Joseph. Beginning in 1920, Martha Harris attended Union County Elementary School and enrolled at Morganfield High School for two years. She entered Mount Saint Joseph Academy as a junior in September 1930 and entered the novitiate on September 7, 1931. On March 19, 1932, she received the Ursuline habit and the name, Sister Martha Ann.
Sister Martha Ann spent her first three months on a mission at Calvary, Ky., keeping house for the Sisters teaching in the public school there. She came back to Mount Saint Joseph to teach the elementary students attending the Academy. Later teaching assignments included Sorgho, Chicago (Ky.), New Haven and St. James in Louisville. During these years, Sister accumulated credits at Mount Saint Joseph Junior College, Ursuline College (Louisville), and Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. In 1948, after a year of full-time study at Fontbonne College in St. Louis, completing a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with a minor in math, she taught those subjects at Mount Saint Joseph Academy. In 1952, Sister Martha Ann spent a year at Creighton University earning a master’s degree before coming to Brescia College as the first chair of the Chemistry department. She, along with Sister Casimir Czurles, designed the floor plan for the Brescia College Science building and taught there for 23 years. In 1975, Sister took a sabbatical from Brescia to study medical technology at the University of Oklahoma. Upon returning to Owensboro, Sister worked as a medical technologist at Daviess County Hospital for eight years. As her physical stamina declined, in 1985, she spent one year visiting the sick with the Kentucky Council on Aging Project in St. Stephen Parish. She returned to Brescia where her unusual gift of loving her students, remembering their name, face and accomplishments before and after graduation, gave new energy and success to the work of the Alumni Office. In 1988, she came to Mount Saint Joseph Conference and Retreat Center to serve as librarian.
In 1990, Sister Martha Ann had to retire after neck surgery, which left her without the use of her hands and legs. She fought back to the extent that she could answer the phone at the nurses’ station in the infirmary and do limited secretarial work there. She paddled her wheelchair to the dining room, chapel and wherever Sisters were gathered, especially for parties. Sister spent the last 16 years of her life in a wheelchair but never lost her sense of humor and deep curiosity about life, the unique way she was present to students and people in general, appreciation for the gift of an Ursuline vocation, or the ability to be joyful in the spite of suffering. Many loved her. Grown men who had been her students wept at her coffin.
Sister Martha Ann died in Saint Joseph Villa on October 17, 2006. After the wake service on the evening of October 20, Father Tom Kirkendoll, GHM, celebrated the funeral Mass next morning, October 21, the feast of Saint Ursula. Men who had been her students at Brescia College served as pallbearers. Sister’s remains are buried in the convent cemetery.