Sr. Mary Clarence (Adeline) Borkoski, CSSF, a member of the Felician Sisters of Our Lady of Hope Province, died at St. Mary Mercy Hospital in Livonia, on Monday, April 20, 2020. Sr. Mary Clarence was 83 years old and spent 64 years as a Felician Sister.
Adeline, the daughter of Walter and Evelyn (Parkinson) Borkoski, was third in a family of 13 children. She attended St. Casimir Grade School in Adena, Ohio, and high school at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Academy in Coraopolis, Pa., graduating in 1955. She entered the postulancy of the Felician Sisters, was invested in the habit in 1956 and received the religious name Sr. Mary Clarence. Final vows were professed in 1963.
Sr. Mary Clarence earned a bachelor and master’s degree in education at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. When she retired from classroom teaching in 2008, her teaching career had spanned a total of 48 years. She grew up on a farm, so it was not uncommon to find her beautifying the convent garden with lovely, colorful flowers, or raising Monarch butterflies which brought joy to her and the sisters in the Care Center.
In her semi-retired years, Sr. Mary Clarence became the co-director of the St. Philip Outreach Center and taught in the Kingstree After-School Program, both in South Carolina. Sister also spent more than eight years as a tutor in the Mooncrest After School Program in Moon Township, Pa. Her ministries in South Carolina and in Moon Township found her very much involved in reaching out to youngsters in “at-risk areas.”
When the number of sisters in the St. Francis Care Center in Coraopolis began to decline, it was necessary to move the sisters to another Felician facility where they could receive around-the-clock nursing service. Sr. Mary Clarence chose to go to the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Convent in Livonia, and arrived in July of 2018.
In her new location Sister served at Montessori Center of Our Lady in Livonia. She loved going to the center every day and listening to the children read and relished joining in other school activities and evening programs also.
Sr. Mary Clarence was deeply spiritual, faithful to her time at adoration, kind, simple, hard-working and very much attuned to nature. Her health began to decline in the last few weeks and she was admitted to St. Mary Mercy Hospital. After contracting COVID-19, Sr. Mary Clarence slipped into the Lord’s embrace and journeyed to eternity on April 20, 2020, at 4 p.m.
Interment was at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Southfield, on April 24, 2020.
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