Family Lore about My Great Aunt the Nun.

Also on this visit, my mom was telling stories about 2 times my great aunt the nun (a very talented accountant) bailed out Catholic institutions that were facing huge financial difficulties:

1) When an elementary school in her order was about to close, the former head of the order got her on the phone, and she called up the priest to tell him to keep the school open for one more year, but to ask all the parents to pay the full tuition up front if they possibly could, and to let her use that extra money until the payments would typically come due to the diocese.

About 40% of the parents were able to pay early, so she took that money and invested it short-term, and with that money she made enough to keep the school open.

2) When a hospital was closing and couldn't even pay its foodbills, she personally called up the bread and milk companies and asked them to extend her order credit for just a while longer, and she would guarantee that they got paid.

Then, she looked through the books, and discovered that there was a huge backlog of Medicaid and Medicare forms.

So, she got the billing people to work 6 days a week or they'd be fired (some quit).

Then, since a ton of the $ coming in was for nuns who worked in the hospital and they'd of course taken a vow of poverty, she confiscated all of that $ as it came in, then she invested it short term, and she was able to make enough to not only pull the hospital out of bankruptcy, but to also build a new wing on it.

Years later, she told my mother she could have built her own mother a house with all of the $ flowing in all of the different directions, and "they never would have found it."

. . .

Also, my grandmother loved to party, and didn't take education very seriously, unlike her older sister, i.e. my great aunt the nun.

One time my mom asked my great aunt if she did her sister's homework to get her through high school, and my great aunt didn't deny it.

. . .

Also also, one time there was $0.05 disagreement in her books and the bank's, so they got together to find out where the mistake was.

As it turned out, the bank had made a mistake, and she asked for the $0.05.

"But it's only five cents," the bank person was like.

"If it was your nickel, you'd want it," my great aunt the nun said.

(She wouldn't back down.)

...her books were meticulous, and every tax season she'd treat herself to a 12-pack of Mountain Dew as she did the books, she said she liked the taste, I don't think she realized that she must have also liked all of the caffeine in it...