Sister Mary Enda Hughes, an educator and award-winning poet who produced scores of works of poetry and prose over her lifetime, was 88 years old when she died on November 8, 2011. Sister Enda had been a professed member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame for 68 years.
Beginning in the 1970s, Sister Enda's poetry was regularly published in the Catholic press and literary publications, including Cimarron Review, Critic, Catholic New World, New Orleans Review and Southern Poetry Review. She published a series of poems in the Catholic New World for which she was awarded First Place in Poetry by the National Catholic Press Association in 1977.
Today a collection of her poems is housed in the Burns Library at Boston College as part of the "Liturgy and Life" collection of materials documenting and illustrating American Catholic life in the 20th century. Her most recent poems were compiled into a book, What the Poem Did, which was published in 2010 by United Book Press in Baltimore.
Cecilia June Hughes was born on March 30, 1923, in Fall River, Mass., to Arthur and Loretta (Ford) Hughes and grew up in Cambridge, Mass. Her New England life inspired her earliest writing, she has said. She remembered writing as a child while sitting beside her mother at the breakfast table, and she wrote her first poem in the third grade.
Cecilia entered the School Sisters of Notre Dame in August 1940. She was given the religious name Mary Enda and made her first vows in August 1943.
Sister Enda taught elementary school classes in Baltimore (Sacred Heart of Jesus, 1943-44, and the Cathedral School, 1961-66) as well as in New York City and Charleston, S.C., before becoming a librarian in 1966. She served as librarian and English teacher at Notre Dame Preparatory School (1966-67 and 1969-75) and Archbishop Keough High School (1967) in Baltimore and at St. Hubert Girls Catholic High in Philadelphia (1967-69).
Sister Enda earned a bachelor's degree in education in 1958 from St. John's University in New York and a master's in English in 1970 from Boston College.
In 1976, Sister Enda moved to the College of St. Joseph in Vermont as poet in residence. She later worked as a writer in the adult religious education division of Paulist Press before joining Boston College as an instructor in 1980. There she taught English, creative writing and poetry.
In 1988, Sister Enda left teaching in Boston and returned to Baltimore to participate in community service and volunteer ministry in convents at St. Mary in Govans and St. Lawrence in Woodlawn. Over the years, besides teaching, she had served in a freelance capacity as an editor, book critic, consultant and lecturer on creative writing.
Even after full retirement, Sister Enda continued to write, despite illness, into the 21st century. "For me, writing is a need to speak the truth," she said.
The Second Mile
S. Mary Enda Hughes, SSND
When I was young
I did not know complexities
So caught was I
between the sun and sea.
My song was fish-clean
salt stung
needing no reason.
But now
--anguish and the dry leaves
ending fall--
I hunt October out
when the incredible air
had peaked to perfect gift
I could not take.
Before it broke
I thought I was alive
And yet had not resolved
the reason for the heart
For now
I sing my ragged tune
To a God I met somewhere
Who tells me,
“Go the second mile - - and dare.”