God Love a Duck:

The Story Behind a Fontbonne Saying

Then one day, our Wellness teacher, Keri McPhillips, stopped me in the hallway.

“I know the woman who coined that saying!”

My response was immediate: “YOU DO?!”

She did.

The woman behind “God Love a Duck” is none other than Loraine Sumner, who taught physical education at Fontbonne in the 1970s. At the time, Loraine was the only lay teacher working alongside a faculty of Sisters—and she came before another legendary name in Fontbonne athletics, Ellen Sullivan.

Suddenly, a funny phrase in an old yearbook had a name, a face, and a story.

So, naturally, we had to find Loraine.

With a little research, we learned that she spends time at the Milton Council on Aging—which, in another wonderful Fontbonne connection, is led by Christine Stanton ’86, Director of the Milton Council on Aging.



Chief Advancement Officer Maureen Ridings and I headed over with the original yearbook photo and a special surprise: Loraine’s very own “God Love a Duck” hat.

There, in a side room surrounded by friends and in the middle of a game of mahjong, sat 90-year-old Loraine.

When we showed her the photograph and the hat, her reaction was priceless. She was thrilled—and perhaps just as amazed as we were—that this little piece of Fontbonne history had resurfaced all these years later.

Then she told us how the saying began.

Loraine hated hearing curse words. So, when the girls needed a more appropriate way to express themselves, she encouraged them to replace those words with: “God love a duck!” And apparently, it stuck.

Decades later, the saying was still there in a Fontbonne yearbook, just waiting for someone to ask: What’s the story behind this?

It was a wonderful reminder that every Fontbonne photograph, tradition, saying, and memory has a story. When you take the time to dig a little deeper, you never know where it might lead—or which incredible Fontbonne woman you might meet along the way.

Our history is all around us. Sometimes, you just have to look for it.

God love a duck, and God love Loraine!

Thank you, Loraine, for sharing this wonderful piece of Fontbonne history with us and for your service to generations of Fontbonne girls. We’re so glad this little piece of your legacy found its way back to you.

And now, you can carry on a little piece of that Fontbonne history, too! Limited-edition “God Love a Duck” hats are available in the Fontbonne Duck Shop. Grab yours while they last—and when someone inevitably asks what it means, you’ll have a pretty great Fontbonne story to tell.