Eileen requested this opportunity to write her own biographical portrait:

  When I was ten years old, my parents, Martin and Louise (Curtin) McMahon from County Clare in Ireland, gave me two of the greatest gifts I have ever known: my sister, Theresa, and my introduction to the Sisters of Mercy in Sacred Heart School, Highbridge. And ever since then, more than 60 years now, it has been my great good fortune to work in Mercy affiliated schools and camps and homes. Unfailingly, whether on the shimmering heights of the Adirondacks or on the leveling sands of the Jersey shore; in all the classrooms and lunch rooms and chapels and churches in-between; on Bronx streets, Manhattan subways, and Westchester highways; and most especially along Hudson River shores; the Sisters of Mercy and their unique appreciation for the works of Mercy have nurtured me and provided me with a practical, useful-to-the-universe way to begin to learn to “Let be be finale of seem” (Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice-Cream). 

  That singularly luminous hallmark of Catherine Mc Auley’s “walking nuns,” their unambiguous and indeed relentless focus on truth-in-action-- searching for it, sharing it, laughing at it, crying over it, loving it, running from it, embracing it-- that gift sustains me and makes me honored to walk with all of you and with them and be called friend, a joyous encomium as we here gathered know all too well, attested to by our sense of community when we are together and heightened by our sense of loss of those who walk with us no more, those today made more present and more absent by our longing to see them and laugh with them and walk beside them just one more time, all friends in Mercy.

  Sr. Theresa Kane adds these thoughts about her longtime friend and professional colleague: “Eileen is a devoted sister, a supportive colleague through many years at Mercy College, and an enduring friend. Eileen’s superb gifts of creativity and music, her gift of voice, her profound appreciation for art, drama and culture, and her love of Latin have enriched her life and gifted those around her…. The Sisters of Mercy are gifted by [her] continuing appreciation for and often-spoken reflections of the great legacy of the strong, valiant Mercy women who have gone before us. I am thrilled and delighted to honor [her] as a woman of Mercy and a Friend.”