Sister Ruth (Carol Anthony) Adamites, OP, a native of Detroit, is celebrating 70 years of religious life. She entered the Adrian Dominican Congregation on February 2, 1956, and received her high school diploma from Dominican High School in Detroit later that year. She professed her first vows on August 5, 1957, and her final (perpetual) vows on August 5, 1962.
Sister Ruth received her bachelor’s degree in history, 1964, and her master’s degree in history, 1971, both from Barry College (University) in Miami Shores, Florida.
After her earliest years of teaching at schools in Chicago and South Carolina, Sister Ruth taught for 12 years at Catholic schools throughout Florida and, for one year, in Georgia. She returned to Michigan in 1970, first as teacher and then as religious education director at St. Jude, Detroit. In 1978, she was elected Co-Provincial of the St. Catherine of Siena Province, based in Detroit, spending the last two of her four-year term serving part-time as pastoral minister at St. Anne Parish in Detroit. She continued her ministry at St. Anne full-time from 1981 to 1985. Her last ministry in the Archdiocese of Detroit was serving as pastoral associate at St. Mary in Wayne, 1985-1987.
Sister Ruth came to the Diocese of Gaylord in 1987, serving as pastoral administrator of Holy Family in West Branch until 1994 and as pastoral administrator at St. Joseph Parish in East Tawas, 1994 to 1996. Her last years of formal ministry were in the Diocese of Saginaw: as a pastoral minister at St. Michael/St. Joseph in Deford from 1996 to 2003 and as a substitute organist in Saginaw until she moved to the Dominican Life Center in Adrian in 2015.
“There have been some hard days, but I have always been so very happy,” Sister Ruth said, recalling especially some “great years” serving as a pastoral leader in parishes in Northern Michigan without ordained pastors.