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FEATURE: ANSWERING THE CALL
The Power
of Yes
LINDA RABE MARTIN ‘67
“I can do it.”
Those four words launched Linda
Rabe Martin’s ‘67 teaching career at
Cor Jesu Academy nearly 30 years ago,
and have guided it ever since. One
thing she can’t seem to do, though,
is walk away—even in retirement.
Cor Jesu has been Linda’s family since
she walked through the doors of the
original campus on The Hill as a freshman
in 1963. She attended two years there,
and then two years at the Gravois
campus before graduating in 1967.
In her day, the Apostles of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus were the majority of
the teachers and the students were an
Above: Linda Rabe Martin ’67 with colleague and friend Donna Johnson.
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integral part of the Sisters’ community.
Students would even stay after school
on Fridays to help the Sisters clean
because there was no maintenance staff.
“I cleaned more at Cor Jesu than I did for
my mother at home,” Linda says with a grin.
“But we liked it because it made us feel a
part of everything here. CJ was our home.”
So, when faced with two job offers,
one in technology at another high
school and one to teach math at Cor
Jesu, Linda made the obvious choice:
she came home. And even though she
had just earned her master’s degree in
technology and was further removed
from math, her undergraduate degree,
being with her family at CJ was her
priority. She simply said, “I can do it,”
and began teaching math in 1990.
A few years later, in 1999, Sr. Virginia
Herbers, ASCJ, ‘89 and some students were
planning Cor Jesu’s first-ever senior Kairos
retreat. The group needed another adult
team member, and Linda said, “I can do it.”
For the first five years, Sr. Virginia
spearheaded Kairos and Linda continued
helping as an adult team member. But,
when Sr. Virginia was transferred in 2003,
Cor Jesu needed someone to take over
her role. Because Linda had been involved
with Kairos since the beginning,
Sr. Virginia recommended her to
CJ’s principal at the time, Sr. Sheila
O’Neill, ASCJ. That recommendation
led to Sr. Sheila asking Linda if she’d
like to take over the retreat.
“Kairos was extremely important to me
because I was passionate about helping our
students understand and experience more
fully how deeply God loves them,” Linda
says. “And so, I trusted in God’s direction for
my life and said, ‘Absolutely…I can do it.’”
Unbeknownst to Linda, yet another
change was on the horizon. In 2004, Cor
Jesu needed a teacher for one section
of freshman Theology. Linda had been
taking courses through The Pontifical
Paul VI Institute of Catechetical and
Pastoral Studies and the Archdiocese on
her own for years, simply because she