MUSCATINE, Iowa — A celebration planned for Sunday would have seemed far off on Feb. 1, 1959.

That was the day when Catherine Connell, a 1958 graduate of Hayes Catholic High School and the daughter of a Muscatine car dealership owner, began training to join the Sisters of Social Service in Encino, Calif.

 Sunday, she will celebrate the 50th anniversary of her ordination with a Mass and a reception at the order she joined as a teenager.

“The first Sister of Social Service (member) I ever met was the day I walked through the doors of the novitiate,” Sister Connell, 69, said Wednesday during a telephone interview from her religious order in California.

“In our novitiate,” Sister Connell said of the quarters where she lived and trained, “we were blessed with spiritual classes in the Old and New Testament, the rule of St. Benedict, the history of the (order), time for daily adoration and spiritual reading.

“Our days were marked by silence,” she said. “To be present to God.”

It was a bit of a challenge for a young woman who was known in high school, Sister Connell says, for kidding around with Michael Henderson, a classmate. His father owned a Chevrolet dealership in Muscatine and her parents, Jack and Lucille Connell, owned what was then Connell Motors, a Chrysler and Plymouth Dealership at 418 E. Third St. It was in the part of the block now occupied by the Muscatine County Administration Building and the Muscatine County Attorney’s Office.

“As an adolescent, I experienced the call from God to know and love God  in a deeper and closer way,” Sister Connell said. “I was profoundly aware that there were others who had less, less family support, less physical security, less means to have a secure life. This drew me to look for a religious community that did social work and wore more plain clothes (and not)  a religious habit.”

After 2 1/2 years of training, she went to work part-time in a parish while earning a bachelor’s degree in social work at Mount St. Mary’s College. She later earned a master’s degree in social work at Catholic University’s School of Social Service in Washington D.C.

“My first-year field placement was with Walter Reed Army Medical Center, working with the severely wounded back from Vietnam,” she said. “That was a powerful experience. I’ll never forget that. I saw the effects of war.”

After working for a second year in Washington at Georgetown University Hospital, Sister Connell returned to California. She worked for seven years in Los Angeles and two years in Vallejo, Calif., Since 1970, she has lived and worked in Sacramento, where she still works full time as a licensed clinical social worker and therapist.

“I have been called to engage and be present to so many life and death experiences with those whom I am called to serve,” she said. “Even though I knew I could never be a nurse, I was asked and was present for the birth of nine babies.”

The mothers were patients at the Wellspring Women’s Center, which Sister Connell helped start in a poor area of Sacramento in 1987.

“I am deeply grateful for my vocation to (my order) and the continual growing awareness of God’s presences in my life, my friends and those I am called to serve,” she said. “I have experienced two serious health problems, ovarian cancer and breast cancer. I believe the Sisters of Social Service and many friends saw me through and let me know God still has more work for me to do.”

50 years of service

Who: Sister Catherine Connell

Birthplace: Muscatine

Profession: Entered the novitiate of the Sisters of Social Service Feb. 1, 1959.

Present ministry: Licensed clinical social worker working as a therapist in Kaiser Permanente adult psychiatry, South Sacramento, Calif.

Celebration: Sister Connell will celebrate her golden jubilee Sunday in California with a Mass and reception. Sister Elizabeth Prus, 98, who trained Sister Connell 50 years ago, will participate in the Mass by lighting a candle and giving it to her during the service.