This story begins in a rather unusual setting. It is a small chapel at the abbey community of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Caen, France, at a funeral. There was something very different about this little nun’s funeral, something not usually seen in such a setting. Her coffin was draped with an American flag, and there were three U.S. Army women in dress uniform present.

Well, there was also something unusual about this little nun who had lived 102 long and very productive years. This is a small window into that life that was so well lived.

Mary Ulm was born in Hamilton, Ohio, in 1920. Her story, like all human stories, is as unique as a fingerprint, belonging as it does to a single soul, a solitary human being. Her story has as much depth and importance as many far more well-known ones. When WWII broke out, Ulm joined the U.S. Army at the age of 22 and was trained in the complexities of military communications. As such, and very unusually, she would find herself being an active participant in the battle that would become the turning point in that war. She actually went ashore with the troops during the later days of the Normandy landings in June of 1944.

As a U.S. Army communications specialist, she would advance with the American Army all the way into Paris, where she marched with her fellow U.S. troops down the famous Champs-Elysées and by the Arc de Triomphe. As a young, 22-year-old woman, Mary Ulm had taken part in the liberation of France. That would be a remarkable story all by itself, but there is more.

While in France, she discovered the Little Sisters of the Poor, founded in the 19th century by Jeanne Jugan to serve the poorest of the poor. The foundress said of the order that they were to be “poor among the poor.” Ulm was deeply moved by the Little Sisters’ kindness and devotion to the refugees and the wounded. After the war, Ulm returned home to the United States, but she could not forget the images of what those nuns did for those who were poor and suffering during the war.