Patricia Walsh Chadwick was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1948. She will speak to us about her upbringing in Cambridge at Saint Benedict Center, which was established in 1940 as a community of devout Catholics committed to fellowship and faith but developed over two decades later into a rigid, sequestered religious sect headed by an excommunicated priest and his cohort, a staunchly Catholic married woman with a puritanical streak. Patricia was one of 39 children raised in this cult and she has written on her experience in Little Sister: A Memoir, a story of indoctrination, fear, suffering, resilience, love and grace. In her presentation she will discuss how she rose above the shame and demons of her past, built a prosperous career in finance and investments, married and raised two wonderful, now adult, children.
Patricia received her BA in Economics from Boston University, and began her financial-services career in 1972, worked at the Ford Foundation from 1976 to 1980, then joined Citicorp Investment Management that year. In 1988, the group was sold to USF&G – and re-named Chancellor Capital Management. By 1991, Chancellor was an employee-owned asset-management business, which was acquired by Invesco in 1998. Developing over the years, Ms. Chadwick’s career at Invesco culminated in the management of a $15 billion asset business. She retired at the end of 1999 as a Global Partner of Invesco, and founded Ravengate Partners LLC, a consulting firm dedicated to providing businesses and not-for-profit institutions with education and advice about the financial markets and the global economy. She is currently working on her next book, which covers the financial industry.
Arranged by Bryan Hooper
Bryan’s notes on the talk:
Patricia Chadwick related the story told in her book, Little Sister, a memoir about her life growing up in an isolated religious community in Massachusetts. Saint Benedict Center was established by Catherine Clarke in 1940 as a club for Harvard and Radcliffe catholic students, and Father Leonard Feeley was hired as chaplain in 1943. Feeney was excommunicated by the church in 1948, but in 1949 he then founded a religious order with Clarke, and named it The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Patricia’s parents, married just over a year and with a baby, joined the order together with about 50 others. Initially a gregarious and fun-loving group, in a few years it transformed into a sect with discipline imposed by Clarke and Feeney, including plain clothes, separation of married couples, and name changes – Patricia became Little Sister Anastasia; her father, Brother James Aloysius; her mother, Sister Elizabeth Anne. The community lived in seven houses behind a red fence in Cambridge until 1958 when Clarke decided to move them to a 17.5 acre site in Still River, MA.
Before the move, any child over the age of 3 had already been separated from their parents within the group, and once the move was completed, Sister Catherine decreed that the 39 children could no longer speak to any of the big brothers and sisters (the adults), apart from eight women, designated as “angels,” who were assigned to look after the children. There was no sexual abuse, but Patricia said there was physical punishment meted out using a piece of garden hose. Despite being deprived of traditional adult nurturing, Patricia looks back on her life then with little rancor and much pleasure: the schooling was good, thanks to an outside hire of a competent principal, they had access to a farm and the care of animals, and were all taught to play a musical instrument. As a junior, Patricia was encouraged to apply to and was accepted by Bates and Vassar. The latter action led – as intended by Sister Catherine – to accrediting the sect’s school, and Patricia was then told by Sister Catherine to withdraw her applications. Eventually, on graduating school, she was expelled from the community and forced into an outside world for which she was less than fully prepared due to being banned from access to any media.
How she managed to obtain her first job and develop a subsequent career in the financial industry is described in Little Sister, and her life in finance is to be the topic for an upcoming book. In addition to reading the book, you can learn more about Patricia’s fascinating story by visiting patriciachadwick.com, and see the video of her talk on: https://youtu.be/vFps6lB3PPQ.