Sister Dorothy V. O'Brien dies at 99

By Bob Schwarz, Charleston Gazette Staff writer
March 18, 2005

Sister Dorothy O’Brien, a familiar figure in the downtown area during the more than two decades she lived and worked at The Cenacle Retreat House on Virginia Street, died Thursday, March 17, in Brentwood, N.Y., where she lived in retirement. She was 99.

Sister Dorothy came to Charleston in 1977, when the Cenacle Retreat House opened in a former convent a half block east of Sacred Heart Co-Cathedral.

“You put your troubles in a bag at the doorstep,” Sister Dorothy used to say about her work and the good that people derived from the retreat house. “When you go home, the burden is still there, but your mind is strengthened.”

An erudite woman who wrote kind and witty notes to hundreds of people who crossed her path, she had joined the Sisters of the Cenacle at age 23 in New York City.

“You’d think as a nun, I’d be so helpful and pious and prayerful and careful,’” she told an interviewer in 1990. “Try doing it.”

Sister Dorothy moved to Brentwood in the late 1990s after the Cenacle closed here and before it re-emerged as the West Virginia Institute for Spirituality.

In her later years, Sister Dorothy was often seen walking the downtown streets, a stooped figure who greeted people with a smile.

“She exercised by walking around the city looking at the poor,” said Sister Carole Riley, a friend and colleague. “She saw God in disguise in everybody.”

To contact staff writer Bob Schwarz, use e-mail or call 348-1249.  

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