Sister Margaret Galm, OSF

Sister Margaret (Armand) Galm died on Sunday, May 5, 2019, at Clare House.

On a hot Sunday afternoon June 24, 1923, Margaret was born to John and Amalie (Schafer) Galm. She was the oldest of seven children which included her brothers Herman, Edwin, Paul, Bernard, John, and her sister, Ruth. Margaret was baptized on July 15 and was named after her grandmother on her mother’s side and her great great grandmother on her father’s side.

In the fall of 1929, Margaret entered first grade in the Moneta Consolidated School at Moneta, Iowa. Her school “bus” was a horse drawn cart. Beginning with her sophomore year of school through her senior year, Margaret attended and graduated from St. Mary’s Academy in Alton, IA.

Margaret remembers both parents often working in the forest after her school day. Her parents always considered care of the environment: the grove, orchard, garden, lawn, and trees in their yard as extremely important, and they took great pride in their maintenance. As children, they often assisted in that care as well. Weeds had no place in the fields or garden. Margaret remembered the times the children pulled “shoo fly weeds” from the corn rows in summer before the seeds dried up and dropped.

While going to school at the academy, Margaret got acquainted with the Dubuque Franciscans, and it was then that the seeds of a vocation were planted within her. Margaret entered the Franciscan community on August 24, 1941. The following year on August 12, she was received into the community and given the name, Sister Mary Armand. As an educator she was sent to St. Benedict; St. John, Bancroft; St. Michael, Sioux City; St. Mary, North Washington; St. Joseph and the Spalding System both in Granville, Sacred Heart, Pocahontas; and Sts. Peter and Paul, West Bend. All these missions were in Iowa. Sister Margaret also taught at St. Joseph in Crescent City, CA.

In 1995 Sister Margaret moved to Dubuque to live at Mount St. Francis. She moved to Holy Family Hall for a short time in 2010 and then to Clare House in 2011.

Sister is survived by her sister Ruth Tewes; brother Bernard Galm; sister-in-laws Delores Ransom and Joyce Thomsen, nieces and nephews, and her Franciscan sisters with whom she shared over 76 years of her life.

Sister was preceded in death by her parents; her brothers Herman, Edwin (Dorothy), Paul, and John (Sybil) Galm and brother-in-law Delmar Tewes.

Memorials may be given to the Sisters of St. Francis, Dubuque, IA.