NEW ORLEANS — Sister Grace Mary Flickinger, a hall-of-fame member who served Xavier University of Louisiana and its athletics department for decades, died Tuesday (June 11, 2024). She was 88 years old.
        Flickinger's funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. EDT Tuesday, June 18 at Our Lady of Calvary Church, 11024 Knights Road in Philadelphia, Pa. Viewing will begin at 9:30 a.m. that day. Burial will be at the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament Cemetery, 1663 Bristol Pike in Bensalem, Pa.
        Flickinger (pronounced flicking-gurr) was a member of XULA's biology faculty from 1968-2016. She served 36 years (1981-2016) as XULA's faculty athletics representative.
        More on Flickinger:
        •  An inaugural member of the XULA Athletic Hall of Fame in 2022.
        •  1998 NAIA Hall of Fame inductee.
        •  2007 recipient of the NAIA's Wally Schwartz Award for her work as a faculty athletics representative.
        •  Two-time president of the NAIA's Gulf Coast Athletic Conference (1990-91, 1995-99) and a longtime member of the GCAC's eligibility and executive committees.
        •  Chaired the NAIA's Council of Faculty Athletics Representatives.
        •  At the request of former men's basketball coach Denny Alexander, she took on responsibilities during the 1980s as academic counselor for athletics.
        •  Honored with a banner — it's permanently displayed in the rafters of the Convocation Center — during XULA's 2017 homecoming.
        •  XULA named her professor emerita of biology in June 2017.
        •  1990 recipient of the Sears-Roebuck Foundation's Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership Award.
        •  She was profiled in a September 1977 United Press International feature story about being one of a handful of scientists around the world specializing in dermatoglyphics — the study of palm prints and fingerprints for clues to genetic defects and other health problems.
        •  A New Jersey native . . . Grew up in Millville, N.J., and a 1952 graduate of Sacred Heart High School in Vineland, N.J. . . . Born Sept. 7, 1935.

Quoting Sister Grace Mary Flickinger
        •  On students and alumni:  "For the most part Xavier students are respectful, want to learn, and have a great social sense, which has always been the hallmark of XU students. There is a special spirit among Xavier students, and our alumni carry it with them wherever they go."
        •  On XULA foundress St. Katharine Drexel:  "Katharine Drexel walked with the poor. Such things as racial prejudice would be foreign to a Katharine Drexel. She recognized we're all children of the same God."
        •  On developing XULA students:  "We give them developmental courses, and we work very hard to help them to make it. We feel that the top students can go to any school in the country, but there is a large segment of students your big schools won't look at. When they do go to Xavier, those same schools will take them for graduate school or medical school."
        •  On XULA's reputation:  "It's nice to go all over the country and say I teach at Xavier, and they don't say, where's that?"

photo of Sister Grace Mary Flickinger by Yamlak Tsega