"Saint Sara"

“Saint Sara”
In Memory of Sara Buchanan Connolly
April 20, 2005

Her name meant princess, and — lest anyone’s condolence notes incur my sister’s immortal wrath — she spelled it S-A-R-A, with an emphatic, “No ‘H’!”

She was the most honest woman I ever knew, and the best judge of character.

She held those around her to high standards, but only because she knew they were the only standards worth meeting.

She had a servant’s heart, and, on occasion, a sailor’s vocabulary.

She lived the fullest life anyone ever lived, and lived it on her terms until there was no more living to do.



Sara Buchanan Connolly was born 32 years ago in Portland, Maine — the second child of a stubborn Irish savant and a beautiful, living saint.

In her every role — as loving sister, brilliant conversationalist, diligent worker, demanding housemate, or loyal friend — Sara Connolly was her parents’ daughter.

A daughter, they were told by the pediatricians assessing the underdeveloped musculature of Sara’s legs, who would never walk.

Well, that was all she needed to hear.

Those doctors were just the first such foils for Sara’s unbending will — the wise and well-intentioned grown-ups handicapped by their underestimation of the disabled.

Anyone who ever tried to tell Sara what she could and could not do can guess how this story turned out.

The leg braces came off after two years, and the walker was discarded a few years later, just in time for Sara to win 40-yard races in Fairfax County’s youth Special Olympics.

As it happened, that day Sara’s baby-brother Patrick also won the 40-yard race in his age group.

Patrick is not here today.

He is at work, emulating, as he has his entire life, his big sister Sara.

It was Sara who paved Patrick’s way through the Fairfax County special education system, so that he too could prepare himself for adulthood.

It was Sara’s speech that Patrick imitated so that he too might communicate with his family.


And it was Sara who taught Patrick how to unlock and open the doors to our home — not so that he, too, might see the world beyond the living room, no…

But so that he, too, might be a co-conspirator in the campaign of terror our beagle dog, Dixie, waged on the neighbors’ trash.

As she matured into adolescence, Sara, like many teenagers, grew frustrated.

She had mastered the relevant curricula of the local special education system, had negotiated for herself an agreeable lifestyle at home (principally revolving around conning Aminta into letting her eat junk food and analyzing the cinematic nuances of Mr. Mom and Adventures in Babysitting) — but — just like her little brother Mike — had little use for the classroom.

It was at this moment in Sara’s life that a thing happened that can only be described as a miracle.

It was then that Sara — thanks to the tireless advocacy of her mother — was selected as the first student in Fairfax County to participate in a new, community-based, special-ed instruction program.

It was then that Sara met a woman named Minna Vogel.

For those who do not know the name, you need only know this: that Sara was an angel, and Minna was her wings.

In the eight years Sara spent in Minna’s class — all the way up to her graduation from Marshall High School in 1995 — my sister blossomed from an insecure little girl to the confident, graceful, beautiful woman we all knew.

Minna gave Sara the skills she needed to negotiate the adult world of jobs and money, transportation and responsibility.

These were the lessons that came to define her.

Two of Sara’s job sites in Minna’s class were the Iliff Nursing Center in the late 1980s, and the Sheraton Hotel in the mid-1990s.

For different reasons over the years, both discontinued their involvement in the community-based instruction program.

When contacted in just the last two school years about re-establishing a relationship with the program — now almost 20 years old — Iliff laundry supervisor Sylvia Ababio and Sheraton housekeeping director Maria Perez both had the same answer:

They said, “If you can send us workers like Sara Connolly, then count us in.”

The debt Sara owed — and the Connolly family owes — to Minna Vogel is beyond estimation.

Minna was not just a teacher to Sara, or a mentor or friend — she was the making of her.

With cheerful determination, stubborn attention to detail, and a genuine interest in every soul around her, Sara graduated from Minna’s tutelage ready to conquer the unexplored frontier… of independence.


She took up residence at a house in Herndon, run by Gabriel Homes under its executive director, our friend Rebecca Hartner.

Seven years there she lived, shared life, did chores, socialized, and offered, shall we say, constructive criticism to those around her who needed, in Sara’s estimation, some tough love.

Those of you who never lived with Sara may not understand what I mean, but I assure you, her housemates Karen, Patrick, Gabe, Mike, and Shelby most certainly do.

They learned quickly — as Mom, Dad, Kate, Patrick, and I had years earlier, and Abby, Sam, Grace, and Ella have learned in their young lives — that their work ethic, personal habits, hygiene, reading material, entertainment preferences, time management, promptness, manner of dress, and general attitude were all subject to her imperious judgment.

God love her, but sometimes she was like living with the PATRIOT Act.

You laugh now, but I assure you, you have not lived a humble life until you have been cursed out in indecipherable profanity by a 70-pound disabled woman in a walker.

But nor could you have lived a full life until you shook her hand, looked into those dazzling blue eyes, sat down next to her, and subjected yourself to the famous in-Sara-gation.

Our older sister Kate ran through it just the other day.

You who met Sara will remember some of the questions, questions which we can all rest assured have all been asked by now of Saint Peter himself.

“Where do you live?”

“Do you have a puppy dog?”

“Where do you work?”

“Where do you park your car?”

And, of course, “Are there fire drills there?”

No matter how often you met her, the questions were the same… because, after all, the answers might change — and that mattered to her.

Because Sara’s unique conversational style was not her way of making small talk or fitting in; it was her way of taking care of us.

That’s why she woke up her oversleeping roommates, warned friends and family of inclement weather, and reminded us all about changing our clocks for Daylight Savings Time.

Because while Sara understood that there were certain things she could not do for her loved ones, she also understood there were certain things she could do for them better than anybody else.

And what more can you ask of anyone?

It is a commendable weakness of the human condition that we are so easily moved to pity in the presence of the disabled.

Our hearts stir in their midst but too often land on the wrong emotion — we feel sympathy when we ought to feel humility.

We squirm at their misfortune, regret their physical handicaps, and lament the injustice of their limitations.

Yet we are thus slaves to the visible world.

Because we see the pain of their falls, but not the grace of their crosses.

We take their afflictions to heart, but we take their shoulders for granted.

This church is not filled today because Sara needed us… it’s filled because we needed her.

Her strength taught us faith, her courage taught us hope, and her friendship taught us love.

Sara Connolly was not special because of the burdens she overcame, but because of the burdens she embraced.

From the day she was born, she took up her cross and held it high, in answer to Christ’s call in Mark, chapter five:

“He took the child by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha koum,’ which means ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise!’”

Though we who knew her best may remember her smile, and her laugh, and her wit, and her heart, we know she was never ours alone.

And though those who fill this church today may understand that a giant lies in that little box, they know, too, she was not theirs.

Even her grieving mother, our hero, who was more loved by Sara than anyone in the world, knows that her daughter was God’s, first and always.

Thus, Sara’s passing Friday was a shock, but not a surprise: earth could not long hold such a creature.

She was perfect, and now she’s home.

According to the Roman Catholic Church, in all the history of Christendom, there has never been a “Saint Sara.”

Well… there is now.