The 32 remaining U.S. members of the order - who live in Ulster and Dutchess counties, New York City, North Carolina and Rhode Island - are expected to be present. About half served in the area as teachers or other personnel at the former Academy of St. Ursula on Grove Street and St. Joseph's School, both in Kingston, as well as John A. Coleman High School in the town of Ulster.

"I'm so proud of our order," said Sister Catherine Gormley, superior of the American Region and former principal at Coleman, where she also taught.

In addition, Sister Gormley graduated in 1954 from the Academy of St. Ursula, the current address of the Children's Home of Kingston. Among the sisters who inspired her was Sister Mary Eleanora, who was principal at the school and taught Latin as well. She now holds the distinction of being the oldest sister of the order in America.

"She was an excellent teacher, excellent," Sister Gormley recalled. "She had studied Latin and Greek. I just remember she made learning so much fun. She had a great classic background, and she was a spiritual person."

The goal of the Sisters of St. Ursula, founded in France, was to teach girls, who did not have the educational opportunities available to boys. The nuns later carried their intent to the United States, when, in 1901, France ordered an edict of expulsion for all religious houses in the country.

Three sisters in the order came to New York City, where they opened a school two years later at Our Lady of Lourdes parish at 144th Street. More than two decades later, a group of area physicians invited members of the Sisters of St. Ursula to open a school for girls in Kingston.

Hurley resident Joanne Fredenberg, president of the St. Ursula Alumnae group and one of 600 living graduates of the school, attended from kindergarten on and graduated in 1962 along with 34 classmates.

"My years there were just wonderful," she said.

Unlike the stereotypical stories about nuns who taught with an iron hand, Fredenberg had only warm memories of the women who nurtured her intellectual abilities. She said the small, private school offered not only academic training but classes in art, music and religion as well, by women with a beneficent spirit that encouraged learning.

"They did instill in us that we could accomplish just about anything," she remembered. "They inspired us."

Like Fredenberg, her friend and schoolmate Louise Rutski of Kingston remembers school days at St. Ursula's with fondness.

"Looking back, I found out what we learned was a sense of community," she said. "You knew everybody's face. You knew everybody's name."

Rutski, too, found the teachers inspirational. In fact she became an English teacher, following in the footsteps of Sister Mary Gerald, now known as Carol Perry.

"She really made us work, but we loved it," said Rutski, who later taught at Miron J. Michael school in Kingston, Kingston High School and Coleman.

Like Sister Gormley, she spoke of Sister Mary Eleanora and her ability to instill the love of Latin in her students. Rutski also remembers Mother Mary Barbara, who served as principal and taught history.

"If you were writing an essay, you couldn't fake it with her," she said.

Rutski said the sisters either came by teaching naturally or developed the art.

"They really worked," she said. "This was what they were called to do."

While St. Ursula's was still open, the sisters were asked by Cardinal Spellman of New York to take charge of St. Joseph's School in Kingston, which they did, in 1943, until Sister Mary Dorothy left the staff in the beginning of 2000.

The Rev. Frank Damis, pastor of St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, which has responsibility for the school, was a student at Kingston Point, where the sisters offered catechism classes, just as they had at Sacred Heart parish in Esopus, starting in 1951.

In 1966, after St. Ursula's Academy had existed for more than four decades, Spellman asked the sisters to take responsibility of a new Archdiocesan co-educational high school in the Kingston area, John A. Coleman High School. It was 10 years later that students noticed a change - not in the sisters, but in their wearing apparel. In 1976, they went back to their roots.

"Our founder (Anne de Xainctonge) never wore a habit to begin with," Sister Gormley said. "(Her clothing) was like the widow's barb of those years, just plain and simple."

Sister Gormley was principal at Coleman from 1972 to 1987, where she taught math and religious studies from 1989 to 2001, when she was asked to become regional superior. She said she is excited about the prospects of teaching part time in the fall at the school from which more than 2,000 students have graduated. One of those graduates is Kingston's Mayor James Sottile, who will offer a proclamation at Saturday's celebration.

Although some members of the order continue to teach, others guide retreats, do social work, take part in parish ministry and visit the elderly, Sister Gormley said.

Members are scattered far and wide in a federation of which there are seven branches, including one in Tours, France, to which the American order is associated. In fact, Sister Alice Mooney of Rosendale, a graduate of the Academy of St. Ursula, is the superior general of the Tours branch, which has jurisdiction over regions in the United States and the Congo, as well as France.

As for Sister Gormley, she is leading the life she wanted in the order she had hoped to join as a young woman.

"I really never thought of anything else," she said.