Grace Major

1st May 2008

A FORMER headteacher of Corpus Christi Primary School has died.
Sister Grace Major was born in Tiverton, Devon, in 1909 and was the eldest of three girls. 

In 1927 she followed her mother's footsteps and began her teacher training at La Sainte Union College in Southampton which is where she had a call to religious life.

Grace taught in London before leaving for Angers in France for her novitiate in 1930. It was as Mother Mary Joseph that she returned to her teaching in the West End of London in 1932.
Grace was a teacher for 35 years and headteacher of Corpus Christi Catholic Primary School, Weston, from 1959 to 1966.

Throughout the 1930s the teachers fought to keep the school open and pushed hard for state funding. Grace refused to be daunted by bureaucracy but it was not until 1951 that the Diocese of Clifton acquired the site in Ellenbrough Park and the school finally opened in 1961.

In 1966 Grace was asked to be one of four founding members of the first La Retraite community in Chile and sadly said her goodbyes to the school. In 1969 she worked as a British Council Primary school adviser and coordinated the work of the Chilean teacher.

She returned to England following the deteriorating political situation in Chile and was invited to join the Bishop's Commission for Justice and Peace. Grace became convenor of the education working party and travelled the UK giving talks on development education.

In the late 1970s she sat on the Education and Latin American Committees of Christian aid and later took on the pastoral role of a listening ear for the staff.

In 1996 when the sisters of La Retraite moved the sisters needing nursing care from London to Burnham, Grace moved to Somerset and died at the home the day after her 99th birthday.

To leave a tribute to Grace, e-mail: david.spear@archant.co.uk

This is on behalf of my late mother, Kathleen Ducker, who taught for a short time at Sister Grace's school.

I know my mother held her in very high regard and Grace gave my mother a gift (with a loving message in it) of Gladys Aylward's autobiography before she left for Chile.

Hilary Ducker. (Ms)