Sister Alverna Hollis was a gifted artist, and, by all accounts, a serious—and wicked—tennis player. She taught elementary school for 13 years, and high school for another eight years.
While teaching at Routt High School in Jacksonville, she was invited to consider learning sign language by a parishioner who worked at the Illinois School for the Deaf in that city so the children could learn their faith in their natural language, ASL.
It was this skill that would occupy most of her time, energy, and passion for much of her life.
The trail she blazed in pursuit of equity for the deaf community stretched from the Diocese of Springfield to Washington DC, from Lima to the mountain communities of Peru.
