Photo Caption: Sister Cor Marie Cielocha, SSND, shares a smile with Ayden as they look over his worksheets at the Children’s Center of Tazewell County.

By: By Jennifer Willems

CREVE COEUR — At 81 (and 10 months), Sister Cor Marie Cielocha, SSND, accepts with good grace that a story about her will be featured on pages that focus on seniors in central Illinois.

“Just tell them we are still active and full of life,” she says with a laugh.

Her 60-year ministry as a teacher, reading specialist and passionate advocate for developmentally disabled children does that better than anything else. For more than half of those years of religious life she has served at the Children’s Center of Tazewell County, which she helped to found and continues to run.

“They have to have their hug and I have to have their hug,” Sister Cor Marie says of the children in the pre-school and clinic school in Creve Coeur. “It’s food for me.”

It’s been that way for as long as she can remember.

AN EARLY VOCATION
One of John and Martha Cielocha’s 11 children, Sister Cor Marie was born and raised on Chicago’s Northwest Side. She knew from the time she was “that high” that she would enter religious life and the School Sisters of Notre Dame at St. John Cantius School and St. Stanislaus Kostka High School provided a good example.

“They were an outstanding order of teachers,” according to Sister Cor Marie, who admitted that she could be a challenging child because she questioned everything. “My mother said that was the way you learned.”

She got an early start in her teaching vocation by doing homework for an older brother, who had survived rheumatic fever but couldn’t keep up at school.

“When he came home I’d say, ‘Let me see your papers today. We’re going to play school. I’m going to be Sister’ and I’d throw a towel over my head,” Sister Cor Marie recalled, adding that she instructed him to say he just got “a little bit of help.”

“But he learned. By the time he died he was able to read, enough to get himself out of trouble,” she said.

What sealed her lifelong care for “children that needed more than ordinary help” was a little Jewish neighbor named Ira. His brain stem didn’t develop and he would often sit in a carriage by the cash register of the ice cream store his mother ran.

After school and her work at a laundry, Sister Cor Marie would rush to the store and talk to Ira. Eventually she gained his mother’s trust and started taking Ira for walks and singing songs to him with her friends.

“This child just blossomed. He laughed and he giggled and he began to say a few sounds,” she told The Catholic Post. “His mother was beside herself.”

Sister Cor Marie said she frequently ponders in faith how these children, who were not blessed with as much ability as others, often cause more good.

“God put them out there that we might be challenged,” she said, “and we got the initiative from God to try things with those kids, to try to teach them.”

TOUGH LOVE AND HUGS
At one time hoping to serve in her community’s missions in Guam, Sister Cor Marie instead has explored ways to develop ministry to African-American and Hispanic children in Chicago and the Peoria area, day care for the children of migrant workers in Princeville, a religious education curriculum for the students at St. Monica’s in East Peoria, and an early childhood program at Illinois Central College.

Her heart has belonged to the youngsters at the Children’s Center of Tazewell County for 36 years. Not only does she oversee the developmental process she designed for the students, but she cooks breakfast and lunch, washes up and offers tough love along with the smiles and hugs they need.

The center, which used to serve 136 children, now has 15 students due to a difficult economy and unemployment. Sister Cor Marie explained that if the parents can’t find work within 30 days after losing their job, their day care benefits from the government are terminated and they have to withdraw their children. Two of her students had to leave her care the day before The Post visited.

Even with the government assistance most of the parents can’t afford the annual tuition of $5,000, so she begs for money from area charitable and fraternal groups. She said she is amazed at the generosity of people, who also donate their time, ice cream, boots and put a few dollars in her hand every week as she leaves Mass at St. Anthony’s in Bartonville.

While ice cream may not seem like much of a gift to some, for her it “tremendous.”

“That five bucks that can go toward something else,” Sister Cor Marie said.

COUNTING HER BLESSINGS
Despite the challenges, she said her life is full of blessings, starting with the four children she has taken into her home as her sons and daughters. Sister Cor Marie calls them “my miracles” who taught her how much her students are hurting.

“How would I ever have known,” she said. “We didn’t have it at home.”

The School Sisters of Notre Dame have blessed her with support and always said, “Try it,” when she wanted to do something new. “I couldn’t have asked for a better support system.”

Sister Cor Marie also cites the many “ordinary saints” who surround her.

“My work is only successful because 75 percent of it was backed by laity who believed in my cause of teaching reading to children,” she explained. “If I didn’t have that backing, if I didn’t have that support, I would not be able to do what I’m doing today.”

Sister Cor Marie doesn’t forget her original blessing — her parents, her brothers and sisters, and their children. She said there are seven or eight special education teachers among her nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews.

“They said, ‘We always wanted to do what you do,'” she shared with a smile.