Born Dec. 13, 1905, in Owensboro, Ky., Dorothy was the daughter of Henry and Elizabeth O’Flynn Payne. She attended grade and high school at St. Frances Academy where she also studied violin for eight years. Dorothy entered the novitiate at Mount Saint Joseph following her senior year and on March 19, 1925, she received the Ursuline habit and the name Sister Mary Cecilia.
Sister Mary Cecilia began her teaching apostolate in 1924 at Mount Saint Joseph Academy and Junior College. She taught music at Sacred Heart Academy in Waterflow, N.M., for eight years and organized the first student orchestra there. The remainder of her teaching years were spent at Brescia College in Owensboro, where she started the first string ensemble. Sister Mary Cecilia also organized a small adult string ensemble which was the beginning of the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra. She was a member of the string section for eight years and served on the symphony board for 21 years. Not only music‑oriented, Sister Mary Cecilia volunteered in her later years at the Help Office in Owensboro where she worked with the poor and destitute.
Suffering from a brief bout with cancer, Sister Mary Cecilia died at Mercy Hospital in Owensboro on July 29, 1987. A prayer service was held at Brescia College, then her remains were brought to Mount Saint Joseph with her funeral Mass being celebrated on July 31, with Fathers Anthony Shonis, MSJ chaplain, Leonard Alvey, and Joseph Mills as concelebrants. Sister Mary Cecilia was buried in the convent cemetery. Among her survivors was her sister, Sister Agnes Miriam, a Sister of Charity of Nazareth.
On Jan. 24, 2009 — 22 years after her death — the principal chair in the second violin section of the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra was endowed in Sister Mary Cecilia’s memory, established in honor of the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph, in recognition of their role in music education in Owensboro and the surrounding region.