Sister Cecilia Clare (1899-1994) sits at one of her favorite places, the pipe organ in the Church of the Immaculate Conception.
Do you have anything you love so much that you practice it every day? Maybe basketball, clarinet or painting? Frances Ada Bocard, later known as Sister Cecilia Clare, is a good example of how much you can accomplish when you put your mind to it.
When she was in first grade, Frances began studying piano. She loved it! In third grade, she started learning how to play the organ as well. Frances was quite talented, and she began as her parish's organist when she was just 9 years old. Since she was only a kid, it was hard to reach all of the keys and pedals of the pipe organ, so for a while she shared the job with another student. One girl would play the keys while the other worked the pedals!
Sometimes people who choose to eneter religious communities also choose a new name to go by when they begin this new part of their lives. So some Sisters of Providence use different names now than the ones they grew up with, while others still use the names they were given at birth.
Frances joined the Sisters of Providence in 1916 when she was 17 years old. From then on, she was known as Sister Cecilia Clare. The sisters encouraged her musical training, and Sister Cecilia Clare got to study music in all kinds of places, from the Bush Conservatory of Music in Chicago to a conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. She learned from many different musicians and composers along the way.
Breaking boundaries
Sister Cecilia Clare taught music for nearly 50 years, sharing her talent with hundreds of students. (Some of her students called her "C.C." for short.) She also spent many years as the Sisters of Providence organist, playing the beautiful pipe organ in the Church of the Immaculate Conception. Because of her skillful playing of the organ's foot pedals, she became known as "the sister with the dancing feet."
One area where Sister Cecilia Clare was really able to shine was in music composition. She wrote choral pieces, hymns, works for organ, even an entire opera! Many people of her time held prejudices against her, not expecting a woman to be so good at what she did. One man said, after hearing a song by her, "There's no way a woman wrote that." But Sister Cecilia Clare didn't let these obstacles stop her. In 1955, her piece called Mass in Honor of Divine Providence won a national award, and she also received several awards in contests of the Indiana Composers' Guild, including first prize in 1942 and second prize in 1944.
In 1987, when Sister Cecilia Clare was 88 years old, the Indiana House of Representatives honored her for "her contributions to the fields of Education and Music" through House Resolution #49. Because of her dedication to her work and to her students, she made countless lives more beautiful through music.
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