The Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods are a community of vowed Catholic women religious. Inspired by our foundress Saint Mother Theodore Guerin, we are passionate about our lives of prayer, education, service and advocacy.
Reconnect or find new opportunities with the Providence Community. Volunteer in one of our many ministries, be an intern on the farm, explore job opportunities or reminisce about your alma mater.
Live joyfully! Single, Catholic women ages 18-42 are invited to explore a fulfilling life as a Sister of Providence. All women and men of faith are invited to join the family of Providence as Providence Associates.
We gather our hearts in gratitude and sorrow as we remember Sandy, our friend, who died suddenly at the age of 81 after a massive stroke. We grieve her absence, and we give thanks for her life – a life rooted in relationship, courage and a deep commitment to love, mercy and justice.
Providence Associate Sandy Wickware
Sandy was a Providence Associate, living her call not as an abstract idea but as a daily practice. She understood that relationship is at the heart of the Providence mission – relationship with one another, with those on the margins, and with the unfinished work of justice in our world.
A Steady Force
As a member of a Providence Circle, Sandy saw a need and responded. She was the steady force behind the Anti-Racism Discussion Group, which she formed and faithfully sustained – first meeting weekly for more than four years, and more recently twice each month.
The group, made up primarily of older white women, gradually grew and expanded to include others beyond the Associates. Sandy knew it was important to share information and perspectives from Black Community members.
She brought several members from the local NAACP Chapter to participate and enrich the learning of the discussion group. Sandy welcomed that growth and made it happen. She believed learning should widen us, not comfort us.
Sandy felt – deeply and clearly – that we have an obligation to learn. And she had a quiet, determined way of making sure that learning happened. She helped shape the group’s direction, sought out speakers, and reached beyond familiar circles to invite voices that could challenge, teach and inspire.
Providence Associate Sandra Wickware received 2023 recognition from the NAACP. She was awarded for “exemplary anti-racism advocacy and volunteer service mentoring children and incarcerated women.” Sandy is pictured here with Sisters of Providence General Superior Sister Dawn Tomaszewski.
Through stories shared, hard truths spoken and hopes voiced for real change, Sandy helped create a space where listening itself became an act of justice.
Justice Became Real
Sandy also entrusted us with stories from her own life, stories she shared not to center herself, but to help us understand the world more truthfully. She spoke of growing up as a Black child and young woman in a small Indiana town during the 1950s and 1960s, years marked by exclusion, resilience and quiet strength.
In sharing these memories, Sandy gave us a gift: She helped history become personal, and justice become real.
In all that she did, Sandy carried herself with kindness and care. Her compassion was not passive; it was active, lived out in service and presence across many chapters of her life. For many years, she served as a foster grandparent in an elementary school, offering patience, encouragement and steady love – helping to shape young lives simply by being there, day after day.
Sandy was also a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) representing the best interests of abused or neglected children, ensuring their voices were heard and they received safe, permanent homes.
Father Terry Johnson blesses the new Providence Associate crosses held by Providence Associate board members Sandy Wickware and Marilyn Rausch.
Sandy also volunteered for years at Ryves Hall, a community center run by Terre Haute Catholic Charities offering after school and summer programming and meals for young neighborhood children. She also worked for 20-plus years as a correctional officer in a women’s correctional center, a role that required strength, dignity and a deep respect for human worth.
Breaking Barriers
And, as we understand it, Sandy broke barriers early on, becoming the first woman volunteer firefighter in Indiana, once again stepping forward where courage and service were needed. Our Anti-Racism Discussion Group benefited from all Sandy demonstrated by her life and leadership.
Sandy was a mentor to many, often without naming herself as such. She guided by example, by listening, by asking the hard questions and by staying. Most recently, she took on yet another sacred responsibility, becoming the guardian of two young great-grandchildren, embracing once more the work of care, protection and love across generations.
Within the last year, Sandy created space for reflection and relationship by starting a book club for members of the Anti-Racism Discussion Group. Some of us continue to be blessed as part of a group where ideas and the challenges of racism continue to be explored, where voices are welcome and community is formed.
Providence Associates Sandra Wickware and Regina Hartman at prayer.
Justice Work is Never Finished
I believe Sandy leaves each of us – especially those of us in the Anti-Racism group – with her strength, her hope and her gentle insistence that we not turn away from the work. She trusted us enough to believe we would continue. She challenged us not simply to remember her, but to honor her by staying engaged, by continuing to learn, to listen and to be changed.
Sandy understood that justice work is never finished. She asked us, implicitly and explicitly, to keep asking the question: What’s next? Not as a demand for quick answers, but as a posture of faithfulness – faithfulness to truth, to relationship and to the dignity of every person.
Her life reminds us that learning is an act of love. Showing up matters. Staying matters. And doing this work together – imperfectly, honestly, persistently – is one way we keep Sandy’s spirit alive among us. We will miss all of the love and her guidance. May she rest in peace.
A Prayer for Sandy Wickware
Loving God of Providence, we thank you for the life of Sandy – for her courage, her kindness, for the ways she showed us how to live justice not as an idea, but as a practice.
We thank you for her stories, for her willingness to teach and to learn, for the spaces she created where truth could be spoken and hearts could be opened.
Hold Sandy now in your boundless love. Grant her rest, peace and joy. May she know how deeply she is cherished and how far her influence reaches.
Give us the grace to carry forward what she began. When the work feels hard, give us her steadiness. When we are tempted to retreat, give us her resolve. When we wonder what is next, give us courage to ask – and the humility to listen.
May we honor Sandy not only in our remembering, but in our continuing. We place her life, and our own, into your love and care.
Karen has been a Providence Associate since 2016. She is retired from her work as a special educator. During her career, Karen worked primarily throughout Indiana as a consultant for families and as a professional development provider for classroom teachers who serve students with vision and hearing impairments. She continues to work part-time as a consultant for the program. Karen lives in Terre Haute and is an active volunteer with both the Providence Community and her local church.
Thank you, Karen, for this beautiful tribute to our wonderful Sandy. She is going to be greatly missed but she mentored so we could continue her work. May she rest in peace and advocate from heaven.
Karen, you have represented Sandy well in this beautiful tribute to her life and to her work with our Anti-racism Group. She was a model for standing firm that all are equal, that barriers still exist that must be overcome, that we need to be aware and do something, but that barriers will be overcome. Her life exemplifies that. Thank you, Karen.
Karen, what a beautiful tribute to a woman who is such a living example of compassion and justice in a world where there is so much suffering and hate, May we strive to continue her legacy.
Thank you Karen, for this wonderful tribute to Sandy. It’s hard for me to believe she is really gone from us here on earth. She had become a ‘fixture’ for me as I returned yearly to our annual meetings. I am thankful I knew Sandy and I can hear her voice through those who worked closely with her on the racism issues and teaching. She was simply a gem of a person! Heaven has one more Saint!
Dear Jenny (hope I spelled it right)
I continue to pray for you and yours. I pray for your niece and nephew who already troubled saw their father drowned,
My father died when I was 11, so I have a special place in my heart for them and now for Sandy’s great-grandchildren.
Do you know their names, their ages??? So I can pray more specifically.
Hoping your life is filled with happiness, holiness and calm. TT
Dear Jenny (hope I spelled it right)
I continue to pray for you and yours. I pray for your niece and nephew who already troubled saw their father drowned,
My father died when I was 11, so I have a special place in my heart for them and now for Sandy’s great-grandchildren.
Do you know their names, their ages??? So I can pray more specifically.
Hoping your life is filled with happiness, holiness and calm. TT
Actually my email is down. But I hope to get fixed this week or next. So send the information anyway.
Again, Hope you have found some peace. Remember you are a good and loving woman and you always do the best you can which is a great deal. And as St. Mother Guerin would say, Let God be God. God will take care of the rest.
Love,
Theresa
Thank you Karen,
Reading about Sandy Wickware opens our souls to the possibilities we have to spread LOVE, justice and mercy. St. Therese the Little Flower said, “Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant count as nothing.”
I am only 77, and I can not imagine caring for two young children. But oh the gift to have Sandy as a Great Grandmother. There is no doubt in my mind she will take good care of us all with the power and increased love that are hers now in heaven. And I plan to say the prayer in her honor frequently as prompt to remember her with action and love.
I think we should all pray for Sandy’s Great Grandchildren. Their lives must have been precarious until she became their guardian, And her death, the loss of her physical presence very difficult. She will continue to care of them. If by some chance you know the children give them extra hugs, give them tiny presents like bubbles, in other words wrap them in love.
I think we should all pray for Sandy’s Great-Grandchildren. The children’s life must have been precarious or Sandy would not have been their guardian,
It must be very difficult and frightening for them now that they have lost her physical presence. She is still with them.
Those of you who know her well enough to know the children wrap them in love.
And watch them for signs of depression and warped childish thoughts. For example, children think they are unlovable because she loved them she wouldn’t have left.
Thank you, Karen, for your touching tribute to Sandy. It makes me wish I had known her better.
What a beautiful tribute to Sandy. Thanks, Karen.
I loved sharing some laughs with Sandy. She was a valiant woman; hard working, joyful and tireless in her love of children. What an example of a person imbued with the charism of Providence. Karen, you captured Sandy so well. Thank you!
I can not stop thinking about Sandy Wickware, Sandy. About her Great Grandchildren. I don’t know their ages. But all children are incredibly wounded by the death of whoever acts as their parent. And these children’s lives must have been precarious until she became their guardian. And now they have lost her physical presence.
I feel I must say again embrace them with love. Carefully without prying look for symptoms of trauma, depression not just sadness, deep anger, not just the scuffles of childhood
My father died when I was eleven. Children can have some odd ideas.
I thought I wasn’t loveable or my father who died of cancer, wouldn’t have left. I was Daddy’s girl, my brothers his sunshine. It was a semi had crashed into out home knocking out the load bearing wall. Our tribe Mom, Grandma, 16 Aunts and Uncles, also dented, managed to wrap us love and security. We survived. We flourished.
I had other warped thoughts. I was very angry at God, who took my father away.
But faith in a good God who I approached through Mary, Jesus mother. And the solid belief that father was still alive and watching over us just from heaven was the foundation our whole tribe’s happiness and successful journey.
Interestingly, I stuffed those thoughts. I could not admit to myself that part of me thought God an ogre, no one could love or my world would constantly be upended.
Those thoughts were a heavy backpack, but they didn’t fell me.
If the howl had surfaced I would have never have gotten through the seventh grade.
The trauma had no name or treatment then.
BUT THERE IS HELP NOW.
Wrap all children in love. Watch them carefully but not obsessively. Give them all hugs, attention, treats and a feeling of safety.
After I retired and my Mom died, my howl began to emerge. I didn’t have to earn a living and no one really depended on me. It could be unpacked in unpleasant, sometimes disturbing but not existence threatening bits. But that’s another story.
For those who want to pray for Sandy’s Great Children, they are Lyric 5 and Legend 3. They are now living with their Grandmother.
For those who know the family better a hug, a card, a bottle of bubbles or a visit mean the world to a child.
I remember the days after my father’s death from cancer when I was 11, Some of the Sisters of Mercy who cared for him in the hospital, visited from time to time. They brought prayer books, children’s books toys, An toy, a chicken made in the shape of a large Easter Egg, that laid jelly bean eggs was a wonder and made us laugh for 15 years or more.
But what they really brought was love and a feeling of safety. Out there in the big people’s world, people we didn’t even know well , nuns the ultimate authority figure in our lives, were praying for us and bringing us presents. With such great grownups, looking out for us, how could doubt we were going to make it, even without Daddy.
If you can, give Lyric and Legend that feeling
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Thank you, Karen, for this beautiful tribute to our wonderful Sandy. She is going to be greatly missed but she mentored so we could continue her work. May she rest in peace and advocate from heaven.
Karen, you have represented Sandy well in this beautiful tribute to her life and to her work with our Anti-racism Group. She was a model for standing firm that all are equal, that barriers still exist that must be overcome, that we need to be aware and do something, but that barriers will be overcome. Her life exemplifies that. Thank you, Karen.
Karen, what a beautiful tribute to a woman who is such a living example of compassion and justice in a world where there is so much suffering and hate, May we strive to continue her legacy.
Thank you Karen, for this wonderful tribute to Sandy. It’s hard for me to believe she is really gone from us here on earth. She had become a ‘fixture’ for me as I returned yearly to our annual meetings. I am thankful I knew Sandy and I can hear her voice through those who worked closely with her on the racism issues and teaching. She was simply a gem of a person! Heaven has one more Saint!
Dear Jenny (hope I spelled it right)
I continue to pray for you and yours. I pray for your niece and nephew who already troubled saw their father drowned,
My father died when I was 11, so I have a special place in my heart for them and now for Sandy’s great-grandchildren.
Do you know their names, their ages??? So I can pray more specifically.
Hoping your life is filled with happiness, holiness and calm. TT
Dear Jenny (hope I spelled it right)
I continue to pray for you and yours. I pray for your niece and nephew who already troubled saw their father drowned,
My father died when I was 11, so I have a special place in my heart for them and now for Sandy’s great-grandchildren.
Do you know their names, their ages??? So I can pray more specifically.
Hoping your life is filled with happiness, holiness and calm. TT
Actually my email is down. But I hope to get fixed this week or next. So send the information anyway.
Again, Hope you have found some peace. Remember you are a good and loving woman and you always do the best you can which is a great deal. And as St. Mother Guerin would say, Let God be God. God will take care of the rest.
Love,
Theresa
Thank you Karen,
Reading about Sandy Wickware opens our souls to the possibilities we have to spread LOVE, justice and mercy. St. Therese the Little Flower said, “Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant count as nothing.”
I am only 77, and I can not imagine caring for two young children. But oh the gift to have Sandy as a Great Grandmother. There is no doubt in my mind she will take good care of us all with the power and increased love that are hers now in heaven. And I plan to say the prayer in her honor frequently as prompt to remember her with action and love.
I think we should all pray for Sandy’s Great Grandchildren. Their lives must have been precarious until she became their guardian, And her death, the loss of her physical presence very difficult. She will continue to care of them. If by some chance you know the children give them extra hugs, give them tiny presents like bubbles, in other words wrap them in love.
I think we should all pray for Sandy’s Great-Grandchildren. The children’s life must have been precarious or Sandy would not have been their guardian,
It must be very difficult and frightening for them now that they have lost her physical presence. She is still with them.
Those of you who know her well enough to know the children wrap them in love.
And watch them for signs of depression and warped childish thoughts. For example, children think they are unlovable because she loved them she wouldn’t have left.
Thank you, Karen, for your touching tribute to Sandy. It makes me wish I had known her better.
What a beautiful tribute to Sandy. Thanks, Karen.
I loved sharing some laughs with Sandy. She was a valiant woman; hard working, joyful and tireless in her love of children. What an example of a person imbued with the charism of Providence. Karen, you captured Sandy so well. Thank you!
I can not stop thinking about Sandy Wickware, Sandy. About her Great Grandchildren. I don’t know their ages. But all children are incredibly wounded by the death of whoever acts as their parent. And these children’s lives must have been precarious until she became their guardian. And now they have lost her physical presence.
I feel I must say again embrace them with love. Carefully without prying look for symptoms of trauma, depression not just sadness, deep anger, not just the scuffles of childhood
My father died when I was eleven. Children can have some odd ideas.
I thought I wasn’t loveable or my father who died of cancer, wouldn’t have left. I was Daddy’s girl, my brothers his sunshine. It was a semi had crashed into out home knocking out the load bearing wall. Our tribe Mom, Grandma, 16 Aunts and Uncles, also dented, managed to wrap us love and security. We survived. We flourished.
I had other warped thoughts. I was very angry at God, who took my father away.
But faith in a good God who I approached through Mary, Jesus mother. And the solid belief that father was still alive and watching over us just from heaven was the foundation our whole tribe’s happiness and successful journey.
Interestingly, I stuffed those thoughts. I could not admit to myself that part of me thought God an ogre, no one could love or my world would constantly be upended.
Those thoughts were a heavy backpack, but they didn’t fell me.
If the howl had surfaced I would have never have gotten through the seventh grade.
The trauma had no name or treatment then.
BUT THERE IS HELP NOW.
Wrap all children in love. Watch them carefully but not obsessively. Give them all hugs, attention, treats and a feeling of safety.
After I retired and my Mom died, my howl began to emerge. I didn’t have to earn a living and no one really depended on me. It could be unpacked in unpleasant, sometimes disturbing but not existence threatening bits. But that’s another story.
For those who want to pray for Sandy’s Great Children, they are Lyric 5 and Legend 3. They are now living with their Grandmother.
For those who know the family better a hug, a card, a bottle of bubbles or a visit mean the world to a child.
I remember the days after my father’s death from cancer when I was 11, Some of the Sisters of Mercy who cared for him in the hospital, visited from time to time. They brought prayer books, children’s books toys, An toy, a chicken made in the shape of a large Easter Egg, that laid jelly bean eggs was a wonder and made us laugh for 15 years or more.
But what they really brought was love and a feeling of safety. Out there in the big people’s world, people we didn’t even know well , nuns the ultimate authority figure in our lives, were praying for us and bringing us presents. With such great grownups, looking out for us, how could doubt we were going to make it, even without Daddy.
If you can, give Lyric and Legend that feeling