Heritage Society Members See Adrian Dominicans and Christian Brothers as their Spiritual Families

People see family in a variety of ways. Barbara Rodrigues and her husband of 36 years, Ken Biggs, see their spiritual families as the religious communities they called home for 25 years before their marriage in 1987. Barbara is a former Adrian Dominican Sister and Ken is a former member of the Christian Brothers, a religious order of men founded in the 17th century by Jean-Baptiste de La Salle to establish schools for children of working-class parents.

As members of the Adrian Dominican Sisters Heritage Society, both Barbara and Ken will be leaving donations to the Adrian Dominican Congregation after their deaths through planned giving.

"We're very close to the Adrian Dominican Sisters, as well as the Christian Brothers," Barbara said. "We see them as our spiritual family of origin." But they also give credit to their own families for their faith foundation and for sending them to Catholic schools. "It's a gift we treasure," Barbara said.

Barbara graduated in 1959 from Bishop O'Dowd High School in her native Oakland, California, and was a student at Holy Names College in Oakland when she decided to enter the Adrian Dominican Congregation. "I had the Adrians in high school and I knew a lot of religious orders, but the joy of the Adrians and the uniqueness of each of them attracted me to Adrian," she explained.

As a Sister, Barbara taught at Visitation School in Detroit, St. Mary School in Adrian, and St. Thomas Aquinas School in East Lansing before returning to teach at her alma mater, Bishop O'Dowd High School, from 1969 to 1977. From there, she served as principal of Dominican High School in Detroit until 1983.

But it was at Bishop O'Dowd that her life changed. She took her students to Christian Brothers Retreat and Conference Center, where Ken was ministering. "It was then that we met and became friends," she recalled.

Before serving at the retreat center, Ken taught at several schools, about a third of them run by the Christian Brothers. He noted that the Christian Brothers tended to teach children who came from families in need. "The Brothers gave the kids a [financial] break if their father was a fireman and they couldn't afford it," he said. This was in keeping with the spirit of St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, "a priest who recruited people off the streets and made them teachers," Ken said.

Barbara and Ken continued to minister to others. Barbara taught at Mercy High School in Burlingame, California; edited math textbooks; and served as Director of Education for a nonprofit, teaching math and science teachers and trying to promote Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) programs. Ken spent the next 20 years as a teacher and then as a campus minister at St. Francis High School in Mountain View, California.

In retirement they continue to live in the spirit of what they learned from their religious communities. "We have a shared life of prayer," Barbara said. "It's like being in community with two people .... It's a continuation of what was started by the formation we had."