The Higgins Connection

This past June, when Lynn and I returned to the US for a visit we had lunch with Bitsy Thompson, the younger sister of Jack Higgins. We had a pleasant time exchanging information with her about Jack's experiences as a Maryknoll missionary priest from the '50s and '60s in Bolivia and our own current experiences there. Since we had moved back to Cochabamba from Carmen Pampa in January, we had closer contact with members of Maryknoll. And since we would be returning soon, she asked us if we would mind presenting the Mary of the Mountain to members of the Maryknoll Society there in Cochabamba. Of course, we were happy to do that. At that time the centennial celebration of the Maryknoll Society was only a few months away, and Jack was one of the first Maryknoll missionaries to serve in Bolivia.

This copy of the Mary of the Mountain¹ picture was a significant gift because it had first been given by Jack to his own mother and was perhaps a reminder that their separation was a great sacrifice for both of them undertaken for a noble cause. Lynn and I thought of this as we remembered our separation from our daughter, Emer, while on mission and our need to work for the needs of others in honor of our son, Norbert. When we presented this picture to the Maryknoll Society in Cochabamba at a plenary meeting, we could see that all of us--from multiple generations--were accepting various levels of separation from culture and family in order to carry on good works begun by others. Only one of those present at the meeting was old enough to remember Jack, so we shared a few details about his life.
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¹ We also discovered that the Mary of the Mountain was created by a Maryknoll sister, Marie Pierre Semler, and that she also happened to be a relative of Nora Pfeifer, one of our fellow Franciscan lay missioners here in Bolivia.