Sister Mary Frederick Lochemes

August 30, 1904 - January 20, 2000

History Professor

Sister Lochemes taught at Stritch for 50 years

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Monday, Jan 24, 2000
by ELDON KNOCHE

Sister Frederick Lochemes, who traveled for a year in South America in the 1940s and did not retire from the history department at Cardinal Stritch University until age 87, died of natural causes Thursday as St. Joseph's Hospice.

Lochemes, 95, wrote "We Saw South America," a book about the places and people she had visited. Traveling 25,000 miles by such conveyances as airplane, train, bus and mule, she visited every country on the continent and part of the West Indies with a colleague, Sister Patrice McNamara.

McNamara, who died last March, wrote a junior high textbook about Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela based on the journey in 1943-'44.

Both were members of the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi and were professors at St. Clare College in St. Francis, the forerunner of Cardinal Stritch.

Lochemes served as a history professor at St. Clare and Stritch from 1941-'91 and was among those who helped plan the new campus in Fox Point. The school opened there in 1962.

She was academic dean from 1941-'62, organized the college's placement service and the continuing education department and was co- host of the campus' first Elder Hostel.

In the late 1940s she helped start the school's Mothers' Club, which raised money for items not covered in department budgets and for scholarships and the building fund. The club was dissolved when she retired because it was determined that the marked increase in working mothers made it difficult for them to participate in the daytime fund-raisers and other events.

She was born Josephine Lochemes on Aug. 30, 1904, in Milwaukee, the only child of Frederick and Josepha Lochemes. She entered the order in 1921.

Lochemes held a bachelor's degree in history and math from Seton Hill College in Greensburg, Pa., and a doctorate in American history at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

She taught junior high and high school in Longmont and Sterling, Colo., before joining the St. Clare faculty.

A time of remembering will be held at St. Francis Convent, 3221 S. Lake Drive, at 6:40 p.m. Monday. A memorial service is scheduled for 7 p.m.

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