A New York City street acquired a new name this past weekend honoring a Catholic sister’s decades of dedication to the East Harlem community.
On Saturday, April 25, more than 100 people gathered to celebrate the newly named street — Sister Susanne Lachapelle Way — named for the life and legacy of Lachapelle and her contributions as a registered nurse, advocate, and Little Sister of the Assumption (LSA).
“With a heart rooted in justice, she dedicated herself to serving the vulnerable through home visits, healthcare, and tireless advocacy, both locally and globally,” Rosario Jimenez, director for LSA Family in Mission, told EWTN News.
The event and street naming flowed from Lachapelleʼs work with Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service, a community-based nonprofit based in East Harlem. Founded by the Little Sisters, the organization offers numerous programs to help vulnerable families and children meet their basic needs.
The group has been in the city for almost 70 years and Lachapelle “really helped to set the trajectory for the organization,” Ray Lopez, chief program officer of LSA Family Health Service, told EWTN News.
She was “a foundational visionary staff person and a leader who really, to this day, has a very profound impact on many of us who are on the staff and worked shoulder to shoulder with her, learning from her,” he said.
“Since her passing, weʼve all … redoubled our efforts to find a way to keep LSAʼs original mission and vision going in this current environment,” Lopez said. “We really wanted to find ways to keep her name out there and the legacy going.”
The street is on the southeast corner of East 115th Street and First Avenue. “Itʼs almost the exact midpoint of where Sister Susanne Lachapelle lived in the Little Sisters of the Assumption brownstone and where the LSA Family Health Service … center is located,” Lopez said.
“She walked there every day for at least two decades,” he said. “We thought it was the appropriate place.”
Sister Susanne and the Little Sisters: ‘Unsung heroes’
Lachapelle entered the LSA order in 1962 and took the religious name Sister Susanne Mary of the Sacred Heart. She made her final vows in 1971.
In her 60 years of religious life, she served in numerous areas and worked with many ministries. But for 45 years she made the community of East Harlem her home, helping to spearhead the LSA Family Health Service’s programs.
As a nurse, Lachapelle conducted home visits, which “was a foundational program of LSA Family Health Service,” Lopez said. “All of the programs grew out of those interactions, those early interactions of nurses going into the homes to treat the sick and poor and really seeing conditions firsthand, sitting with families at their kitchen table, hearing their stories.”
“Sister Susanne and the rest of the leadership created other programs to really provide wraparound services for families,” he said. “The Little Sisters set up a food pantry and a thrift store just to make sure that people had the very basics.”
“From there, the services were about connecting people with public benefits, providing support around education, education enrichment, education navigation. A lot of … programs focused on maternal child health and early childhood development.”
Along with her support for health and families, Lachapelle also had a passion for protecting the environment through her commitment to Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’, a call to protect our common home.
Lachapelle decided to initiate “an environmental health component to the work that the Little Sisters were doing,” Lynn Tiede, a volunteer for LSA Health Service who worked with Lachapelle, told EWTN News.
“She worked with the families and saw problems like asthma and other debilitating health things, she realized that … itʼs mold, itʼs the air quality, itʼs these other things that are really at the root of these health problems.”
“Everybody was just so inspired … to see her traipsing into rough, rough buildings and just without any hesitation,” Tiede said. “If you went into a home and people were dealing with asthma, you … send in the environmental health team and then they try to work to get the building management to actually address those things.”
With the success of her work, she even collaborated with the human rights group and nongovernmental organization Vivat International, where she helped bring voices and environmental issues to the United Nations, but she always remained “very, very humble,” Tiede said.
Due to her humility “there were a few people who were against [the street-naming] when we proposed it, because they thought she would hate it — because she was so humble,” Tiede said.
Ultimately they chose to honor Lachapelle and the Little Sisters because they are “unsung heroes — these quiet heroes,” Tiede said.
The process to get the street renamed began in 2024 and it was found to be an easier process than expected, as the city council was eager to acknowledge Lachapelle and the Little Sisters.
Sister Susanne’s lasting impact
At the street naming celebration organizers “were expecting around 80 participants, but I think it was maybe 150 or a little bit more,” Jimenez said. “There were community members, families that she served, youth that she served, … volunteers, and of course, our board members and benefactors.”
It honored her “simplicity and the way that she used to be a leader,” which was “was grounded in integrity, purpose, love,” Jimenez said. “Having a street named after her will honor all of that.”
Reflecting on the event, Lopez said: “[It] feels like a dream because so many people came that worked with her in the past.”
Despite having to move the event inside to avoid the cold and rain, the crowd of people stayed to celebrate. It “was crowded with people, and our center lobby was filled completely,” Lopez said. “It was just a very festive atmosphere.”
He added: “It was really moving to have so many people there from so long ago that still feel it in their hearts, [how] the work here in East Harlem impacted their careers, impacted their lives, and that itʼs still a very significant thing for them,” he said.
