Sister Ann retiring from Barrington’s St. Anne

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

As a little girl, Ann Busch dressed up as a nun and ran with abandon through the fields of her family’s farm singing “The Litany of the Saints” ... in Latin.

Tears come to her eyes these years later as she greets joyous children on their last day of school June 3, not much older than she was then. This is her last day overseeing a full school as principal.

St. Anne Catholic School Principal Sister Ann, now more than 50 years a nun and 10 years as the school’s principal, is retiring as principal and will no longer be greeting her pupils every morning, rain or snow.

“They are my kids and I told them they will always be my kids,” said Sister Ann, who prides herself on remembering all their names, more than 400 children a year.

Quite possibly the last nun to be principal at the 84-year-old school, her successor is Mrs. Dawn Kapka. Indeed, St. Anne is one of four local schools run by the School Sisters of St. Francis, a Franciscan community.

There is no convent at St. Anne and memory fades of a time when its convent was filled with teaching nuns in their black habits and flowing rosary beads.

The Roman Catholic Church changed but so did Sister Ann, who first entered the convent at the tender age of 15.

No longer the Cuba City, Ill. farm girl, the oldest of 11 children, she reads romance novels on a Nook.

A diminutive 5-foot-2 inch woman, she took dance classes and can waltz, swing, and do the cha cha.

She cross-stitches and one of her own intricate religious portraits hangs in the principal’s office.

She travels too. This flying nun has toured Alaska, England, Hawaii, Ireland, Italy and Scandinavia. In France, she took art appreciation classes and now can talk Manet, Monet, Pissarro or the paintings of Alfred Sisley that changed the way she looks at the sky.

“It’s broadened my life,” she says.

Post-principal days, she may also want to teach a bit of accordion, cello, guitar, organ, piano, pipe organ, violin or voice. Accordion?

She may also be seen tooling around Barrington in her Chevy Malibu picking up a Hazelnut Iced Coffee at McDonald’s or a Haagen Dazs ice cream at the Jewel.

Her teaching career could be viewed as having an unconventional side.

Previously St. Mary School principal in Buffalo Grove, she once sat on the school’s roof for a day, after she dared students to raise $10,000 for updated World Book Encyclopedias.

Chicago TV, radio and newspapers drove out to cover the sight.

The next day a headline read, “It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No it’s a nun on the roof,” she said, adding St. Anne’s roof is “too high.”

However, St. Anne and Sister Ann continue in a strong tradition. A uniform dress code. The “Prayer of St. Francis” on the intercom every morning along with the Pledge of Allegiance and birthdays.

Catholic school principals once had a reputation as being “tough” and a couple children asked said she can be strict.

“If I have to be tough I can be but people don’t feel threatened,” she said. “They are kids and they are going to make mistakes.”

Still vibrant at 70, she won’t retire from being a nun or from service. The former president of the Archdiocese Principals Association, she intends to work with the Office of Catholic Schools, mentoring other principals.

However, on her final day of school the St. Anne principal’s office filled with flowers for Sister Ann, followed by a prayer service in the main church. Officially, she will be principal until June 30.

The Rev. Bernard J. Pietrzak said years from now students will realize how special it was to have a nun as their principal at St. Anne.

“You represent an end of an era,” he told her.

Tears welled again as Sister Ann stepped forward into the main of the church, filled with children eager to get summer started.

This singular nun told them all they “will always be my children.”