Sister Patrice Floyd remembers actress Farrah Fawcett as "a little first-grader with pigtails" at Christ the King School in Corpus Christi, Texas, Fawcett's hometown.
Fawcett, who first rose to fame starring on "Charlie's Angels," died in Los Angeles June 25 at age 62 after a three-year battle with cancer. A private funeral Mass was celebrated for her June 30 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.
A longtime educator, Sister Patrice, a Sister of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament, is a former principal of several Catholic schools in the Diocese of Corpus Christi. She said the Fawcett family lived across the street from Christ the King.
Later Farrah and her older sister, Diane, attended St. Patrick School. Farrah --- born Mary Farrah Leni Fawcett on Feb. 2, 1947, in Corpus Christi --- then went to Hamlin Junior High, graduated from Ray High School, and was attending the University of Texas when a movie publicist saw photos of her and suggested she try show business.
She played small parts in several TV shows, reached pop icon status on "Charlie's Angels," and earned an Emmy nomination for the 1984 TV movie "The Burning Bed" playing a wife who is a victim of domestic abuse.
By this time, Fawcett had married and then (after nine years) divorced actor Lee Majors. Since the 1980s she lived off and on with actor Ryan O'Neal, with whom she had one son, Redmond. The couple never married; the son is in jail on drug charges.
Though she was raised a Catholic, her faith never seemed to be a topic of her interviews. But as she battled cancer, Fawcett spoke about praying to God and hoping for a miracle.
In a documentary about her struggle that she produced and which aired on NBC in May, she was often shown holding a rosary during her treatments. Before her death, news reports said a priest came to her hospital room and administered the church's last rites.
Sister Patrice recalled that in the early 1950s, she was a seventh-grader at Christ the King School and Farrah's sister Diane was in the eighth. The two grades were combined and the girls became friends. (Diane died from lung cancer on Oct. 16, 2001, just before her 63rd birthday.)
When Farrah Fawcett and Majors were in town, Sister Patrice noted, they often came by the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament Convent to see two of the older sisters who taught Farrah in school. Both nuns have since died.
The visits were always in the evening and Fawcett wore a disguise, Sister Patrice said. "The press would go wild when she was in town."
Many of the sisters knew the star, the nun said. Sister Collette Brehony, a Sister of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament who is now director of religious education at St. Gertrude Church in Kingsville, had been her teacher at St. Patrick School, according to Sister Patrice.
---CNS |