If you asked Dolores Fowler what drove her calling to religious life, she may respond "a little yellow school bus." Growing up in San Jose, Dolores attended local public school as did her six siblings. Every day she watched other kids go to school on a little yellow school bus. She told her mother that she wanted to go to school on that bus, and eventually she did, attending sixth grade at St. Joseph's.  By the seventh grade, as a student in Sr. Roberta Julie's class, Dolores knew what she wanted to be, but still she "wrestled" with the idea.

Dolores recalls walking to the corner store with her friend Jimmy.  She was kicking a pebble and thinking hard.  She wanted to become a Sister someday, but....  Her thoughts went back and forth as they walked down the street.  Finally Dolores kicked the pebble really hard and knew that that was it. She had decided. She said to herself, "God, okay, you'll have your way. I'll do it."  And the rest is "herstory."

Sr. Dolores Fowler

When she was assigned to a sixth grade classroom after teaching second-grade, she met the challenge of junior high with a colleague's advice on how to handle adolescents: don't smile for the first eight weeks. So she didn't. But her nature was not to be so rigid, and she finally broke down, told her sixth graders a joke and broke the ice. After that experience, smiles and stories were regular part of her classroom tools.

As a fourth grade teacher, Sr. Dolores discovered that having the students tell their own stories was a good way to get the shy kids to speak in front of the class. Even now, when former students approach her, they recall telling stories and getting licorice - a treat Sr. Dolores offered students when they had a good day.

After 47 years in the "regular" classroom, she took her teaching to other rooms. As a volunteer in her community of Longview, she takes Communion to the neighborhood assisted living facility. There she uses the same tools: she tells jokes and listens to their stories. She counsels those who are newly arrived and those who are afraid to live there. She tells them they have nothing to fear, that they still have things to look forward to, and mostly that this is a new time in their lives when they can share their stories.

Sr. Dolores is grateful for her faith and the family of the Sisters of Notre Dame.  She is very active in her parish, St. Rose in Longview, which recently celebrated her Jubilee with her by celebrating a special Mass in her honor.