Sr. Kathleen Voss, OP, died at the Dominican Life Center in Adrian, Michigan, on July 24, 2026. She was eighty-five years old and in her sixty-fifth year as a professed Sister.
Kathleen was born on March 9, 1941, in Detroit to Henry and Shirley (Mallis) Voss. She had three older siblings, Sally, Dan, and Diane, and two younger ones, Paul, born four years after her, and Tim.
Henry was born in Chicago, but after his mother died, his father moved the family to Detroit. Shirley was born in Ontario, Canada, and adopted by a couple living in the U.S.
Henry was mechanically gifted and grew up to become first a typesetter for a print shop and then a toolmaker. “He also was one who loved to do ‘spontaneous’ things with his family, which created more than one funny story,” Sr. Kathleen wrote in her autobiography – although she did not elaborate further.
Shirley was in poor health for much of her life and even became bedridden at one point, but when she was able, she played the piano and organ by ear and loved to sing. “She sang throughout the day while doing her housework or cooking our meal,” Sr. Kathleen wrote. “Her singing constantly gave me great delight. She had a great sense of humor and always enjoyed having laughs with the family.”
Before Kathleen was old enough to start school, the family moved from Detroit to tiny Empire, Michigan, near Traverse City. There, they lived on farmland complete with a barn where the children spent time jumping from the rafters into the hayloft a floor below.
The Vosses also had a cottage on a small lake, and by rowing across the lake and running down a short sandy path, the children would be at Lake Michigan. In the wintertime, they delighted in climbing the huge piles of plowed snow. “Nature was all around us, showing off all its beauty for each particular season,” Sr. Kathleen wrote. “My senses whirled with all [there] was to see, smell or touch.”
In 1947, the family moved to Clawson, and after three years of scrimping and saving, Henry and Shirley were able to send their four youngest school-age children to grade school at Guardian Angels, Sally already being in high school by that point.
Guardian Angels was staffed by the Adrian Dominican Sisters, and Kathleen, already inspired by her kindergarten teacher to become an educator herself, decided in short order to enter religious life. In fact, when she became an eighth grader, she was determined to become an Adrian Dominican Sister after that school year.
Her parents and priest discouraged that, however, and she enrolled at Girls Catholic Central High School in Detroit along with her sister Diane. There, she was taught by the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters and, for a time, thought her future as a religious would be with them. But in September 1959, after having graduated that June, she went to Adrian to become a postulant.
Choosing what subject to major in as a student at Siena Heights College (University) was easy. From childhood on, she was good at art and could often be found sitting quietly by herself sketching pictures she saw in books, magazines, or the newspaper. Then in high school, she enrolled in a mail-order art curriculum called Art Instruction. And so, it was clear to her that she should study art in college.
Kathleen became a novice in August 1960, receiving the habit and her religious name, Sr. William Lorraine (her parents’ middle names). Her year in the novitiate came with considerable challenges, however, related to the aftereffects of the rheumatic fever she had contracted in sixth grade, and whether she would be allowed to make profession was in question because she would need to withstand the rigors of teaching. In the end, she did profess her vows and, at a doctor’s recommendation that she be sent to a warm climate, was missioned to St. Patrick School in Miami Beach, Florida.
Most of her second-graders were recent arrivals from Cuba. She loved the children and enjoyed teaching younger students, and for the next 17 years, she taught children ranging from 3-year-olds to 4th graders. After St. Patrick School, where she spent a year, her next several assignments were to St. Mary Help of Christians School, Aiken, South Carolina (1962-1964); St. Mary School, Assumption (Swanton), Ohio (1964-1966); St. Pius X School, Toledo, Ohio (1966-1969); St. Mary School, Van Wert, Ohio (1969-1970); and St. Francis Xavier School, Medina, Ohio (August 1970-January 1971).
She spent the last half of the 1970-1971 school year completing her bachelor’s degree in fine arts at Siena Heights, then taught at Holy Angels Parish in Sturgis, Michigan, for a year. Her next two years (1972-1974) were in religious education at St. Edmund Parish in Warren, Michigan, before she returned to the classroom, serving over the next four years at St. Joseph School, Wilmette, Illinois; St. Suzanne School, Detroit; and St. Gerard School, also in Detroit.
Over time, Sr. Kathleen began to realize that all too often she was “putting emotional bandages” on children because the parents needed mental health assistance. And so, in 1978, she enrolled at the University of Detroit (later the University of Detroit Mercy) and earned a master’s degree in counseling to become a state-licensed therapist.
She then spent five years (1980-1985) at Hegira Programs Inc. in Wayne, Michigan, working with clients dealing with a wide range of mental health issues. The experience helped her greatly when she returned to teaching after medical problems necessitated a change in ministry. She served at St. Thomas Aquinas School in Detroit from 1986-1990, and the students “got the very best” of her, she wrote, because she had a greater understanding of both the children and the situations some of their parents faced.
As those four years at St. Thomas Aquinas went on, however, her health challenges caused her to go from teaching full days to half days, and in late 1990, she left education completely and became a pastoral minister at Resurrection Church in Lakeland, Florida, working especially in bereavement ministry, in individual and marital counseling, and with senior citizens.
She returned to Michigan in 1993, residing with Sr. Marie Solanus Reilly in Dearborn Heights as she continued to deal with a myriad of health issues. She returned to teaching one final time, teaching computer graphics part-time to students at St. Martin de Porres High School in Detroit from 1997 to 2000.
She also continued to produce art throughout this time and long after moving back to Adrian, where she resided at the Dominican Life Center. In her later years, that art was created digitally; being able to paint on her computer was “a major lifeline for my psyche,” she wrote.
At Sr. Kathleen's wake service, her great-niece Jennifer Maxwell remembered “Aunt Kathy” – the name which, she said, “belonged just to me” – as a wonderfully devoted great-aunt who was “truly invested in my life.”
Jennifer recalled that when she was a child, her Aunt Kathy came to her piano recitals, and as Jennifer anxiously waited her turn, Sr. Kathleen would quietly lean over and whisper, “Just listen to the beauty.”
“Looking back, that simple sentence says so much about how she saw the world,” Jennifer said.
Sr. Kathleen is survived by her family and her Adrian Dominican Sisters.
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