lit a candle 6h ago95 years old. Seventy of them as a Sister of Mercy.
Their story
Sister Dorothy Ann Plafcan, RSM, was an American Catholic religious sister of the Sisters of Mercy who spent seven decades in Catholic schools, most of them in and around Little Rock, Arkansas, as a teacher, religion coordinator, principal and support staff member. She died on 28 September 2026 at Catherine's…
Sister Dorothy Ann Plafcan, RSM, was an American Catholic religious sister of the Sisters of Mercy who spent seven decades in Catholic schools, most of them in and around Little Rock, Arkansas, as a teacher, religion coordinator, principal and support staff member. She died on 28 September 2026 at Catherine's Residence, the Sisters of Mercy care community in the St. Louis area, at the age of 95.
She was born on 5 February 1931 in Slovak, Arkansas, a farming community in Prairie County near Stuttgart that was founded by Slovak immigrants in 1894. Her parents were John J. and Maria Franko Plafcan. She graduated from Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock in 1949 and that year entered the Sisters of Mercy community at Webster Groves, Missouri. She made her profession of vows in 1952 and her perpetual profession on 16 August 1955.
Her first assignment was teaching at St. Patrick School in North Little Rock from 1952. She went on to teach at St. Louis School in Camden, Arkansas, and in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where she was principal and teacher at Sacred Heart Parish School in McAllen. She earned a bachelor's degree in secondary education from Incarnate Word College in San Antonio in 1964 and a master's in education from the University of Central Arkansas in 1975, and was certified as an Arkansas principal in 1988.
Back in Arkansas she taught at Immaculate Conception School in North Little Rock and at Mount St. Mary Academy, then served as teacher and principal at Our Lady of Good Counsel School in Little Rock in the 1970s, religion coordinator at St. Mary's Parish School in North Little Rock, and principal of Good Counsel again from 1983 to 1992. She then returned to Mount St. Mary Academy, her alma mater, where she worked on the support staff from 1992 to 2011. From 2011 to 2022 she lived at McAuley Convent in Barling, Arkansas, doing convent duties and volunteering at Mercy Crest.
In her final years she lived at Catherine's Residence, where, according to her obituary, she was ever more dedicated to prayer and works of mercy. She died there on 28 September 2026; no cause of death was made public. As she had requested, her funeral was held with a closed casket in Catherine's Chapel on 1 October 2026, preceded by a time of storytelling, and she was buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. Arkansas Catholic, the newspaper of the Diocese of Little Rock, reported her death on 21 October 2026.
Biography adapted from Obituary (Bopp Chapel / Tribute Archive), Arkansas Catholic, and Mount St. Mary Academy history.
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1Sister Dorothy Ann Plafcan, RSM
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