Sister Mary Jose' Hobday

SISTER MARY JOSE' (Joan) HOBDAY Friends and classmates were notified of the death of their friend Sister Jose' Hobday, an influential spiritual lecturer, author and storyteller, on April 5, 2009 at the Casa de la Luz Hospice in Tucson, Arizona. A memorial mass will be held on Wednesday, April 15th at Our Mother of Sorrows Parish in Tucson. Her body was donated for science to the University of Arizona. Joan was born January 4, 1929 in Texas and was the daughter of a Seneca-Iroquois mother and a Southern Baptist father. During the early 1930's the Hobday family moved to Cortez where they lived for many years. Joan enrolled in the 2nd grade and continued her education in the Cortez School system graduating with the Class of 1947. After graduation she enrolled in Greeley in college where she remained for five years. She entered the convent in 1952 at Milwaukee, Wisconsin at age 22 and became a Sister of the Franciscan Order. Besides having a broad background in education theology and world religions, Sister Hobday had a Master's degree in theology, literature, architecture and space engineering. She was also a licensed auctioneer and a Seneca elder. Sister Jose' was one of America's most popular speakers on prayer and spirituality often traveling 75, 000 miles each year. Her stories, told in both her books and her cassettes, came as a result from her own experience of growing up as a Native American Catholic in the American Southwest. She called herself a "Student in Life" and a "Missionary-at- large, Itinerant Educator/Preacher." She had been in the Franciscan Community for 56 years; her life was in education and she spent 48 years as a missionary all 50 states and around the world. Sister Jose' for many years could be found driving her jeep when living on the Acoma Pueblo, the Diocese of Gallup or other reservations in the United States where she devoted her life and wisdom to the persons she served. She had worked in many areas with such leaders as Mother Teresa, Richard Rhor, Cesar Chavez, the Dalai Lama and other notables. At the time of her death she was living on the Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation in downtown Tucson. Sister Jose' was preceded in death by her parents, Esther and John Hobday and her two brothers, Richard who was killed in 1995 while in the line of duty with the U. S. Air Force and her younger brother, Jimmie R. who was presumed Dead and Missing in Action on September 13, 1952 in Korea. Obituary by the "friends of Joan" and by permission of the authors of various articles found on the "Spiritual Masters Project." For further information on the Hobday family or to donate to the charity of her choice please contact June Head 565-3880 or Charles Haley 565-7968.