By Denis Grasska
Sister Joy Bourgeois is a 96-year-old widowed mother and grandmother. She enjoyed an exciting career in law enforcement before joining the Missionaries of Charity contemplative branch.
Born in San Francisco and raised on Long Island, she entered religious life in 1986. She made her first profession of vows on Dec. 12, 1989, in the Bronx, New York, and professed final vows on May 31, 1997, in Silver Springs, Maryland.
Question: You have led a colorful life, experiencing both the vocations of marriage and religious life. What has been the through line?
Answer: My motto, in looking back over a very full life, is all about service: I served my family as a wife, mother and grandmother. I served my country as one of the first female law enforcement officers in its history, and now I serve God with full-time duty as one of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity.
You grew up in a very different world. What are some of your childhood memories?
I grew up on Long Island, New York, at the tail end of the Depression.
During World War II, families were put on rations. The war got serious for us kids when all the young men in the neighborhood left for service. When we saw military cars coming down the street slowly, we would all run to the street: One driver would mean that someone had been wounded; two officers meant that someone had been killed or was missing in action.
If we kids did our chores on Saturday mornings, our parents let us go to the movies. For 25 cents, we’d see coming attractions, a newsreel, a feature movie, comics, and a shorter movie, and we had a box of popcorn. Try that today!
When I was about 13 years old, a German spy tricked his way into our house.
Wait … what?
My stepfather worked for the Navy before, during and after World War II. He was in charge of all the mechanical and engineering shops at the large medical school in New York City, and his inventions saved many lives during the war.
It was against the rules for employees in his secret unit to take work home. But the wheels would not stop turning in his head and, sometimes, the order was disobeyed. He once attracted the notice of a German spy, who followed him to our home in Long Island.
One day, the spy showed up when my stepfather was out. He was dressed in dirty work clothes and said he was there to check the burners in our basement. I let him in and left him to his work. After some time, I checked to see if he was still there. He threw me against a wall about 5 feet away and ran up the stairs.
You can imagine what happened after that. It looked like all the FBI agents in the country were in our house for the rest of the day. My mother said she preferred to clean up after them than to imagine what the Navy said to my father, even though the spy did not get anything of value.
What role did the Catholic faith play in your childhood?
I was raised Protestant, but my husband, Everett — we called him “Bud” — was a serious French-Canadian Catholic.
Before we were able to get married, the local bishop instituted a ban on marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics in his diocese. Bud barged into the bishop’s office and told him: “I have come home from four years of war, and you are telling me that I cannot marry the woman of my choice?” The bishop replied, “I guess not,” and gave us a dispensation.
We were married on May 24, 1947, in the old wooden church of St. Mary’s in Bud’s hometown of Westbrook, Maine. The day before our wedding, I found out that ours wouldn’t be a mixed marriage after all: My father had secretly baptized me in a San Francisco church as a Catholic, with only him, my godparents and the priest present. After a quick confession, I got married as a Catholic in good standing. We could imagine the bishop laughing up his sleeve.
Bud and I were married for about 35 years. We had two sons and one daughter. Today, I’m also a proud grandmother to two boys.
What were some of the jobs you had before entering religious life?
In the 1950s and 1960s, I served with the Civil Air Patrol. With the completion of 25 courses from the Air Force Academy, plus all the required hours of flight, I received my silver wings with the rank of Chief Warrant Officer in the U.S. Air Force. I was a navigation instructor and flew search-and-rescue operations.
In the early 1970s, I joined the U.S. Customs Service’s Sky Marshal Program, where I was one of the first female sky marshals.
As part of the training, in addition to a rigorous written exam, I was handed a used revolver and told to put 100 rounds in the bullseye from about 100 feet away, 50 righthanded and 50 lefthanded. A perfect score was required. Many people washed out of the program.
I was a sky marshal for about two and half years, and then I became a U.S. Customs Patrol officer. I later served as a licensed private investigator for the University of Maine Law School.
What are some memorable experiences in law enforcement?
I was a U.S. Customs Sky Marshal in the Treasury Department with a warrant as a Deputy U.S. Marshal in the Department of Justice, cross-trained as a bodyguard in the Secret Service and eligible to fly and sail with the Coast Guard. Ultimately, I did all of these things, bodyguarding movie stars, some members of the Kennedy family, and one American ambassador whose life had been threatened.
All told, I gave my country 23 years of my life. When I finally hung up my spurs and said farewell to the U.S. Customs Service, I had 32 letters of commendation in my files.
Someone once made an attempt on my life. One night, I was followed by a car that tried to force me off the road. I turned up all the interior lights in my car, so the driver could clearly see me, pulled out my weapon and aimed it at him with the window down. He took off at high speed, with me in pursuit, and crashed through the exit barrier and into a wooded area. After calling fellow law enforcement, we went into the woods with drawn pistols and flashlights. We found his smashed-up, stolen car, but he had gotten away.
My family knew that I went to work with a weapon or two and that I did not work in an office, but I never told them about some situations that happened.
When did your association with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity begin?
I first heard about Mother Teresa in 1980, when an Indian bishop came to Chebeague Island, Maine, and spoke about her work. Bud and I both wanted to know more about her.
Bud died from spinal cancer in 1982, and I didn’t know what I was going to do after that. Some friends encouraged me to write to Mother Teresa, expressing my interest in working with her.
I met Mother in the Missionaries of Charity’s house in Harlem, New York, and did a lot of work for her for a year as a lay volunteer. I transferred to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1983 and served there until 1986.
In 1986, Mother put me in the contemplative branch of the Missionaries of Charity because that’s where she wanted me.
The Missionaries of Charity is just about the greatest outfit I ever knew about. Of course, I didn’t come up from the bottom like most of the sisters. I started at the top, with a personal relationship with Mother and with her pushing me toward where God was calling me.
How did your children respond when you said you wanted to become a religious sister?
I sat down with them and said, “We’re a family. We’ve always done things together. This is what I want to do, this is my opportunity, but I won’t go without your permission.”
They said, “You need our permission? Well, you’ve got it. And, if you don’t like it with the Missionaries of Charity, just come back to us.”
They were very happy for me and, since I’ve entered religious life, they’ve come to visit as often as they could. They always come on my birthday.
How did you go from “Louise,” your birth name, to “Sister Joy”?
As I told Mother one day, Jesus spoke to me in the chapel.
Mother said, “Oh, really? What did He say?” I answered, “He told me, ‘Sister Joy, own nothing, want nothing, be nothing.’”
When Mother looks you right in the eyes, you better be square. Well, that’s exactly what He said.
Not many can say that they know a saint. What was Mother Teresa like?
Mother looked simple, like a peasant, but she was as sharp as a tack. She was as kind as any human being could be, and she had a great sense of humor. She could get mad once in a while –– I’ve seen her get mad –– and she could fall asleep in a pew. But what she stood for, what she did, walking out of that convent with just a few rupees! She knew what God wanted her to do, she never stopped helping the poor, and she taught us how to do it, too.
What message do you have for those who are discerning a vocation to religious life?
If the young women of today only knew what religious life was like, they’d be pounding at the door to get in.
When they get tired of this world, of what’s going on in this world, just come over and see us. We’ll give them a life that they’d be happy with. It’s a completely different life. It’s happiness that they don’t even know exists. They’d be sorry they didn’t do it earlier.
