It is unfair to remember her at the last, except to recall her bravery. Despite the prayers of her Ursuline sisters for God to take her, she must have heard Dylan Thomas's voice in those last unconscious moments on the hospital bed, for she did not "go gentle into that good night." She lingered bravely in this world -- not that she did not want to go to the next world, where, if anyone has a place, she does -- but, I firmly believe, she lingered bravely because she loved this world so very much.

Perhaps her bravery -- not just at the point of death, but in her life, too -- is what I shall remember most.

Is it crazy to call a frail woman barely five feet tall brave? Oh, she knew all about that other kind of bravery, the kind her beloved Shakespeare immortalized in Prince Hal as he defeats Hotspur on the battlefield and becomes a true hero. But she was brave in other ways. I remember one day during the mid-1970s when the meagre faculty salaries that we were suffering with at Springfield College were being drained by inflation (that eventually reached 20%). A call went out to faculty members to meet at Mike Long's house to discuss our mutual misery and come up with a list of demands and suggestions that we would present to the appropriate administrators. Ours was clearly a meeting of the rebels. None of us expected any of the religious faculty to meet with us, but when I got to Mike's house, Mike -- who would later become Dean of the College -- immediately said, "Sr. Loyola is coming, too." I was aghast. Was she coming to report on our rebel plans? Mike didn't know, but soon after she and Sr. Carmelita entered his house, we knew her true feelings. Of course, her very presence was enough to temper our outrage and modify our demands. She sensed that immediately. Yes, she disagreed with our proposals because, she said, they didn't go far enough, because they were not brave enough. She knew the price of meat and bread, and she thought we should demand a larger increase in wages.

Out of that meeting came the Faculty Affairs Committee, the quasi-administrative committee that, to this day, oversees and communicates to the Springfield College administration the vital concerns of its faculty. And when that committee sat to meet for the first time, Sr. Loyola was a member. The chair she sat in completely engulfed her, and her head was demurely lowered, but we knew her chin was set, and her bravery was our inspiration.

She was brave in other ways as well -- intellectually brave. She was never afraid of discussing those issues of importance that we all wrestle with -- or should. I had the great pleasure of devising a Winter Term course with her, called "Literature on Film." We picked four pieces of literature and then found feature films made from them so that students could understand the similarities and differences between film and literature. Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was the drama we chose. As with much of Tennessee Williams' writing, if you dig deep enough into it, you will find references to homosexuality. Sr. Loyola and I discussed what we would say about this controversial subject before we met our class, one day. We were agreed on how the subject had been incorporated into the play, and we agreed on the inherent illogic behind Williams' position regarding it. In class, I noticed that Sister was beginning to shy away from the discussion. Afterwards, she told me: "Gary, why don't you lead the discussion tomorrow by yourself? You see," she said, "I sense that the students are reluctant to discuss this subject when I am in the room. I don't know why. Do they think I know nothing about it?" If a person can be sensitive and brave at the same time, Sr. Loyola was.

That sensitivity and bravery made her unique. Her bravery was never bluster; it was based on the right, the true. With her you could discuss any subject, and she especially encouraged you to bring up subjects that would have made you uncomfortable with another nun. I remember openly discussing celibacy with her one day, reminding her that Sir -- some say, Saint -- Thomas More had refused to be celibate because he believed celibacy was unnatural. Is celibacy a perversion, I wondered aloud? Sr. Loyola scowled a little. But if it isn't a perversion, then what makes it different from all the other unnatural activities we might do? Sr. Loyola looked up, wonderingly, thoughtful, not saying a word. But you can't be perverse by not doing something, I said to her. She began nodding her head. And besides, I continued reasoning aloud, what you're not doing by being celibate is an exercise in free will that sacrifices a powerful human instinct to something greater, proving to the world that will -- free will -- the one thing that makes us greater than any other creature -- is our greatest gift from God, a proof that we are like Him. "Yes," she said, finally speaking. "Yes, yes." And I looked down at her, a female Irish Socrates, who had, by her mere presence, let me find the right answer for myself.

Once I said to her, after we had discussed the Illinois seatbelt law that made it illegal to endanger yourself as a motorist: "You know, 'Ster --" (Affectionately, we called her 'Ster, imitating the Catholic grade school children's shortening of "Sister.") "You know, 'Ster, the greatest tyranny is the tyranny of the Good." "Yes!" she said, in that bright, clear voice she eventually lost, "And the greatest danger, too."

Perhaps I should remember her bravery most -- that she was fearless facing any argument, or any worldly or other-worldly topic because she was secure in the clarity of her faith, in the intellectual rightness of it. Perhaps I should remember her in that way, but I confess that when I think of her, I see her impish Irish smile, and I hear her completely incongruous "Hah!" as she bludgeoned me with a "Draw Four" in our Uno games. She confessed that she was proud that the saint for whom she was named, Ignatius Loyola, was, in his youth, a gambler and a card player. She attributed her expertise at cards to him. We other Uno players, however, knew that she was invoking the Almighty to work for her, and we thought that a bit unfair. Why was it she won so many games on Mondays? Obviously because she had spent the weekend in the Convent chapel on her knees, asking the Almighty for another helping of Irish luck. And we other players suffered for it. "Hah!" she would say as she dished out a penalty card for someone to the left or right of her, and we felt the rapier of revenge in the hands of a mischievous leprechaun.

Her wit was legend because it was so sure and so devastating. In the midst of the intense lobbying to get the equal rights amendment passed, I remember musing with her about whether there were some substantive differences between the way that women think and the way that men think. "Women have certainly achieved success in literature," I said. "Think of Sappho and Christina Rosetti and the Brontes, Jane Austen, George Sand, Edith Wharton." She was nodding again, playing Socrates with me. "But," I went on, "isn't it curious that no woman has ever become a chess champion? Could it be something in the way a person has to think in order to win at chess that marks the difference?" She looked up at me with that sly grin and those twinkling eyes. "It may be," she said softly but clearly, "It may be, we women have better things to do with our time."

Now, because of my ethnic heritage, I am somewhat familiar with the stiletto. Its long sharp blade slips through the skin between the ribs before the victim realizes what is happening. That little nun, with her laughing eyes and coy smile, could wield a verbal stiletto just as deftly as any Sicilian brigand on a highway.

At her gravesite, after all the words were said and all the prayers chanted, the symbolic handfuls of soil were poured onto her coffin by those who loved her. The funeral director held the bucket and scoop for others to do the same. I had taken a sprig of miniature daisies from a floral bouquet that had been in the chapel to which I and the other pallbearers had carried her coffin just moments before. I raised the sprig of daisies to the funeral director, wordlessly seeking his permission to put them on her coffin. He nodded his assent, and I walked to the edge of the grave. As I leaned forward, I remembered Shakespeare's sad words given to Ophelia: "Here's rosemary for remembrance." I placed the sprig of flowers on the soil that covered her coffin, and silently I said to Sr. Mary Loyola Power for the last time: "And here are daisies, 'Ster, for spring."