Sister Edna Louise DeManche of Honolulu, a nun with a passion for studying and teaching biology, died Feb. 21 at the Malia o ka Malu Convent. She was 96.
DeManche moved to Hawaii in 1940 to teach science and English to middle- and high-schoolers at Maryknoll School. In addition to her work in the classroom, she was well-known for her assertion that science and religion aren’t competing ideals.
"If you’re going to talk of religion and say that God created the world, science buys that," she told a Honolulu Advertiser reporter in 2001. "If you’re going to talk about evolution, then you’re asking practical problems about nature, and the Bible has nothing to say about that."
Throughout her long career, DeManche penned many scientific articles, school curricula, small books and teaching guides for Hawaii science educators.
When Gov. Linda Lingle was in office, she heard about a group of five educators DeManche was a part of that was working with the University of Hawaii to study ways to improve Hawaii’s science education. DeManche provided Lingle with an outline of the group’s work and Lingle followed up by asking for the entire report, but her term ended before the work was finished, said Sister Regina Mary Jenkins, provincial superior of the Sacred Hearts Sisters.
DeManche was born in 1915 in Marionville, Mo., to a nonreligious family. Her parents enrolled her in the Catholic school system when she was 12 years old not to make her religious, but because she was a "roughneck, little smart-aleck tomboy," she said in 2001.
But she went on to enter the convent after finishing high school — without their initial support — and took her final vows in 1940.
DeManche served as the ecology chairwoman on a curriculum, research and development team within the University of Hawaii’s College of Education between 1967 and 1980. During summers, she worked as an ecology instructor for environmental teaching skills for the U.S. Department of Defense at Fuchu Air Station in Japan, the Marshall Islands of Majuro and Ebeye, and American Samoa.
After that, she became executive secretary for the Hawaiian Academy of Science and director of the annual Student Marine Symposium. Then she returned to the Honolulu diocese’s Catholic School Department and served as associate superintendent from 1988 to 1992.
DeManche is survived by niece Betty Jones Reichert of Temple, Texas; nephews William of Naples, Fla., and Thomas Jones of Belton, Texas; and several cousins, grandnephews and grandnieces.
Visitation will begin at 9 a.m. Monday at Malia o ka Malu Convent, 1117 4th Ave. Rosary will begin at 9:30 a.m., and Mass will be celebrated at 11:30 a.m. Burial will be at 1 p.m. at Hawaiian Memorial Park. Online condolences can be sent at www.borthwickoahu.com.
