Women celebrate 50 years as sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Cross News-Chronicle Four women who are celebrating 50 years as sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Cross (Bay Settlement), will be honored by their community on Sunday. A Jubilee Mass at Holy Cross Church in Green Bay will be followed by a reception and dinner with friends and family. Sisters celebrating the 50th anniversary of their reception as members of the community are: äÊSister Rose Marie Buscemi: She met the women of St. Francis of the Holy Cross while attending St. Joseph Elementary School in Madison. As a sister, her first assignment was teaching 53 third-graders at St. John School, Howard. "With 53 kids, I wonder how we did it, and I was a second-year novice!" During most of her religious life, Sister Buscemi has held two jobs, teacher and principal or teacher and religious education director. Her teaching and religious education ministry included St. Boniface, De Pere; St. Jude, Green Bay; St. Mary, Peshtigo; St. Joseph, Marinette; All Saints, Denmark; Holy Martyrs, Green Bay; St. Mary, Algoma; and Sacred Heart, Manitowoc. Today, she is director of religious education at Annunciation Parish, Fox Lake. She earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education from St. Norbert College a master's certificate in religious education from St. Mary, Omaha, Neb., and advanced certification in religion from the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay. äÊSister Mary Jean Gauthier: Originally from rural Oconto, she says, "I have always had an appreciation of the beauty of God's love in creation. To be close to nature is a way of being close to God. We didn't have a lot of material things, but we had a lot of love." Sister Gauthier has been a homemaker, a home health caregiver and a missionary. One of her favorite assignments was in Tache, an Indian village of the Tl'az'ten Nation in British Columbia, Canada in the early 1970s and then for a year in 1992-93 as a parish minister She also served in Darboy, Peshtigo, Denmark, Marinette, at St. Francis Pre-Novitiate and Our Lady of Good Help Chapel in Robinsonville and McCormick Home in Green Bay. Today she serves in internal community service. ä Sister Charlene Hockers: A De Pere native, she attended St. Matthew Grade School and St. Joseph Academy in Green Bay. Since she had finished high school when she joined the order, she was asked to teach as a second-year novice. She taught at schools in Goodman, Howard, Denmark, Darboy, Bear Creek, Green Bay, Dyckesville and Mishicot. After 25 years in the classroom, Sister Hockers felt the need to move on. "I had the teaching and organizational skills for religious education. I'm not only in touch with the children, but I'm also making a difference in the lives of the families." In religious education, she served in Peshtigo, then in three parishes at Gillett, Cecil and Suring. Most recently, she served for 10 years at St. Nicholas in Freedom, where she helped implement the LifeTeen Program for high school students, and where she developed a family program for first-eighth grades. She received her bachelor's degree from St. Norbert College through many years of summer school. Her master's degree in theology was earned at St. Xavier's College in Chicago and her master's in pastoral ministries is from St. Mary's, Winona. äÊSister Clairann Peplinski: Soon after she was born in Milwaukee, her family moved to Amherst. Peplinski came to know the sisters when they taught catechism two weeks each summer at her parish, St. James Mission in Amherst. Before joining the Sisters of St. Francis, she earned a bachelor's in secondary education from Central State Teachers' College, Stevens Point and taught for two years in Merrill. Sister Peplinski taught at the sisters' newly opened St. Francis Pre-Novitiate, the high school at Our Lady of Good Help Chapel at Robinsonville, from 1955 until it closed in 1968. She served as coordinator of the Motherhouse community for four years and then returned to thecChapel as a core member of the House of Prayer the sisters had established. Later she served as the firector of teligious rducation of the Inter Parish Community of Champion, Walhain, Tonet and Thiry Daems. She was a coordinator in the religious education program at the St. Louis, Dyckesville/St. Joseph Champion parishes and at Holy Cross Parish, Bay Settlement. Today she works in internal community service.