Monday, October 4, 2004
Lower Price Hill's angel Marie's mission
Compassionate nun cares for spiritual, physical needs
By Cliff Radel
Enquirer staff writer
LOWER PRICE HILL - The angel at the bottom of the hill aims to take people to the top. That is the mission of Sister Marie Werdmann.
![[img]](werdmann.jpg)
Passing a sign promoting clean air in the alley near St. Michael Community School, Sister Marie Werdmann walks through the Lower Price Hill community.
(Enquirer photo/Michael E. Keating)
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For the past eight years, she has lived and worked in Lower Price Hill. That's a hard-luck Cincinnati neighborhood where the quality of life for many of its 1,309 residents amounts to just hanging on.
Sister Marie believes she is following a divine plan.
"God just picked me up by my hair and put me down here," said the soft-spoken, 5-foot, 2-inch bundle of energy.
People living in Lower Price Hill insist her well-connected job-placement expert made the right choice.
"In a neighborhood where prostitution and drugs take too many people down the wrong path," said former Marine Tom O'Malley, "she puts more people on the right track by making sure they get an education and getting them help."
When she isn't tutoring high school and college students at the Lower Price Hill Community School on St. Michael Street, Sister Marie practices random acts of kindness.
Walking her neighborhood's uneasy streets, she lends an ear to those in need of conversation and prays for those seeking salvation.
She gives them cabbage, kale and herbs from her garden.
The garden is behind the red-brick house where she lives.
The 74-year-old nun worries about her neighbors' health. She wonders how they are coping after a five-alarm fire at the Queen City Barrel Co. Aug. 19.
"That fire still worries the neighborhood," Sister Marie said. "Every day, we wonder what's in those barrels that burned."
As Sister Marie spoke, she adjusted her favorite headgear, a denim bucket hat with a flower embroidered on the brim. Sure beats a stiff habit.
Her taste in head coverings reflects her personality. Raised in College Hill, Sister Marie became a nun in 1947 and entered the Order of St. Francis.
Since receiving her calling, she has shied away from nunneries. She prefers to work among "people who are needy. They keep me straight and help me understand the beauty that is within those who have less."
Lower Price Hill has plenty of that beauty. The community's median annual household income is $12,188.
When she moved to the neighborhood, Sister Marie intended "to function like a bag lady to get to know the people and help them. But my order reminded me I would have a tough time earning a living as bag lady. So, I got a job tutoring."
After making sure her hat was in place, the nun wandered from table to table in the basement bingo hall of the 99-year-old building that once housed St. Michael School.
Lower Price Hill residents sat at the tables and ate free meals. At the end of every month, money is short in the neighborhood. To help make ends meet, volunteers from inside and outside the community serve free dinners during the last week of every month.
Making her rounds, Sister Marie gathered trays, heard complaints and reluctantly accepted compliments.
"They just say nice things about me," she said with a devilish grin, "because they think I'll put a whammy on them."
Between bites, Joan Davidson thanked her for a recent visit. The nun dropped by her house to check on Davidson's asthma.
William Boyd sat at a back table. The former security guard dug into his food and praised Sister Marie.
"This sweet lady," he began, "got me a fan for my hot apartment right after the fire."
Everyone in Lower Price Hill knows about "the fire." The blaze at Queen City Barrel, oft-cited for environmental violations, was one of the region's largest fires in decades.
Between 40,000 and 50,000 barrels in need of a bath were in the container-cleaning plant. The conflagration caused $5 million in damages. Cleanup continues and investigators have yet to determine what caused the fire.
As huge balls of flame shot into the sky on the night of Aug. 19, fetid smoke blanketed the area. Oily ash fell to the ground.
And Sister Marie prayed.
As residents gathered to watch the fire, she gave them a warning.
"I went up to the girls with babies and said: 'You're too close. The fumes are putting your children at risk.' " The mothers with babes in arm dispersed. Sister Marie went home and fell on her knees.
"I prayed like Moses with my arms outstretched," she said.
Her prayers were answered. A strong wind blew across Lower Price Hill, from west to east.. That kept the flames from spreading.
After the blaze was extinguished, fire inspectors waited three weeks before entering the site. At the same time, people lived and breathed, worked and played, went to school and worshiped in churches near where inspectors feared to tread.
"That's very troubling," Sister Marie said. "We need to know all we can about this fire. And we need to know it as soon as possible."
The barrel company is now a shell of its former self. Minus a roof and windows, parts of the building remain stocked with stacks of barrels, smoke-blackened rust-red.
During the day, a power shovel crushes the barrels one by one. The shovel's jaws pluck a barrel from the debris, deposit the big can on a flat surface. Then the shovel closes its jaws, raises its arm and lowers the boom. Wham! One flat barrel. In its death throes, the barrel exhales one last puff of dust.
The barrels are carted away. The dust remains.
Meanwhile, life goes on in Lower Price Hill.
Every weekday morning, Lisa Hurt gathers her two children - 31/2-year-old Heather and 18-month-old Dominick. She drops them off at the Lower Price Hill Community School's day care center. Then, she goes to school as a first-year student at Cincinnati State.
"I want to be a social worker," Hurt said. "And I want to move to a better place."
Memories of the fire still haunt her. "The smells from that fire reminded me of when I was growing up on a farm," Hurt said. "In the fall, people would burn garbage with their leaves. That's what that fire smelled like.
"That smell scared me. What were we breathing? What are we breathing now?"
While Hurt makes plans to leave Lower Price Hill, Sister Marie hopes to put down deeper roots.
"I dream of turning my living room into a quiet place for women in the neighborhood," said Sister Marie.
"So many homes here are so chaotic, so loud. This would be a place where they could come to talk, to read, to relax."
That room would give them some peace. Just what you would expect from the angel at the bottom of the hill.
About Sister Marie
