Felician Sister Mary Felicia Brodowski, a native of Wilmington who ministered in education for many years, died April 22 in Lodi, N.J. She had been a member of the Felician Sisters since 1956.
Born Barbara Brodowski to Thomas Brodowski and Agnes Szymanski, she attended St. Hedwig School in Wilmington and entered the sisters’ aspirancy in 1956, when she was a freshman at Immaculate Conception High School in Lodi. She was invested in the Felician habit in 1961 and received the name Sister Mary Felicia. Her final profession was in 1968.
After teaching in elementary schools, Sister Felicia moved to the faculty of high schools in New Jersey, where she once received the Outstanding Secondary Educator of America Award. She spent more than two decades at St. Anthony’s High School in Jersey City, N.J. From 1982-88, she was principal of a school with a declining enrollment of 200 in a struggling neighborhood. From 1989-2005, she was president of St. Anthony’s. During thoe years, she traveled into Manhattan to knock on doors of Fortune 500 companies to ask for donations, according to her congregation. She helped raise more than $1 million annually, and St. Anthony’s college acceptance rate reached 100 percent.
St. Anthony’s did not have a gymnasium, but under coach Bob Hurley, the boys’ basketball team won a mythical national championship in 2010 and was the top team in the country one year after winning the inaugural New Jersey Tournament of Champions.
Sister Felicia made the transition into working with challenged adults in the “21 and Over Program,” a part of the Felician School for Exceptional Children in Lodi.
She is survived by family in Wilmington. Funeral services took place April 24. Father Joseph Piekarski celebrated the Mass of Christian Burial. Interment was in Immaculate Conception in Lodi.
