Age 92
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Sister Gess was given an impressively long name that included three generations of her family, Emma Burgess Sullivan Kirby. This lengthy name quickly went by the wayside, and Gess was the only name she remembered being called.
She attended Mount Saint Agnes in Baltimore, Maryland, for elementary school and high school and felt drawn to the Sisters of Mercy who were her teachers. She considered entering religious life but was uncertain that she had a true vocation. Years later she would claim she was “having too much fun to be a nun.” Sister Gess’s mother was equally uncertain about her daughter’s life choice and counseled her to go to college before making such a commitment. Taking her mother’s advice, Gess enrolled at Notre Dame College (now University) in Baltimore, Maryland, where she double majored in elementary education and economics, earning a bachelor’s degree.
Though Sister Gess had not forgotten her possible religious vocation, she began her teaching career in a Baltimore City school, finding that she loved working with young children. She continued her work there for a few years but recalled that “the idea that I had a vocation was always nagging at the back of my mind.” In 1957 Gess entered the Sisters of Mercy at Mount Washington in Baltimore, Maryland, where she made her novitiate. At age 24, she was considered a “delayed vocation,” and struggled to catch up to the younger novices.
Already a teacher, Gess was missioned to teach school, first at Shrine of the Sacred Heart, and then at Mercy High School, both in Baltimore. Though she enjoyed teaching, Sister Gess and her superiors recognized her potential as a counselor, so she began her studies in counseling at the University of Georgia, graduating with a master’s degree in counseling.
She returned to Mercy High as a teacher and guidance counselor, a ministry she enjoyed for 15 years. After serving for three years in Mobile, Alabama, Sister Gess returned to Baltimore and ministered in pastoral care and resident activities at the Cardinal Shehan Center in Timonium, Maryland, and at The Villa, her community’s former retirement home in Baltimore, Maryland.
Energetic and gregarious, Sister Gess was never ready for true retirement, but remained active, continuing pastoral care ministry as a volunteer at The Villa and at Mercy Medical for as long as possible. She died at Mercy Springwell where she had been one of the first sisters to move into the new Mercy retirement center there.