Sister Miriam Kahl
1909-2010
God gave Sister Miriam Kahl the great privilege of living over 100 years. A write-up in the Edmonds Dominican for Summer 1999 read, “Born in 1909, Sister Miriam’s life has touched all the decades of this century, with seven of them devoted to the Dominican way.” At her death, over eight decades had been lived with the Washington Dominicans, the last seven years as an Adrian Dominican. When she died she was buried in Seattle.
Sister Miriam was respected, admired, and loved by her sisters. Her funeral liturgy was held at St. Joseph Residence Chapel in Seattle, Washington, on January 23, 2010. Sister Judith Benkert, Prioress of the Dominican West Mission Chapter, asked those assembled to pray for Sister Miriam’s deceased parents and brother, and welcomed her nephews James and Patrick. She summarized Sister Miriam’s life, and added:
When I met Sister Miriam last August, she was engaging even though her eyesight was very diminished as to shapes and colors. One had to shout in her ear to give information. Little did I realize the love, wisdom, and energy that were packed into that Sister of St. Dominic over the past 100 years. May she continue to walk with us, her sisters, from within the Heart of God, unlimited by earthly bonds.
She quoted Sister Jeri Renner.
Sister Miriam and I lived together for many years. She was my superior, and she admitted that I drove her nuts. I followed her as administrator at St. Joseph Hospital.
She was administrator of over twenty sisters, superior, human resource director, chief financial officer, she relieved at the switchboard, emergency department and surgery, she was mail sorter and administrator. I think she was also on the General Council. She had no secretary.
At the wake the evening before, Sister Francine Barber spoke of Sister Miriam’s three “dwelling places.” The first was short-lived, as a teacher. The second was as a nurse, supervisor, hospital administrator, and superior. In this dwelling, she was a “Jack (or Jill) of All Trades.” No task was too menial, regardless of her position of authority. The third was as a retired sister.
She told a story about Sister Miriam’s retirement.
Sister Maureen Comer, an Adrian Dominican, was then the administrator of the hospital. One day Sister Miriam, who was working at that time in medical records, approached Sister Maureen and said, “This will be my last day of work.” Later she avowed that she resigned in this manner because she did not want any fuss or retirement party, etc. Of course, she couldn’t get away with that, but it says a great deal about her.
She went on to speak of her personal knowledge of Sister Miriam.
I, as a teaching sister, never got to know Sister Miriam before her retirement except for a slight exposure in her role as General Councilor when she would drive up to Rosary Heights for Council meetings. She seemed rather strict and formidable to me—a real “no-nonsense” kind of sister.
When she was no longer in a supervisory position, she relaxed and showed her warmer side. What really knocked my socks off about Sister Miriam was how she handled her limitations. She was unable to see anything but vague shapes. She couldn’t hear unless you placed your lips right next to her ear, and sometimes she could not even taste her food very well. Yet she chose life. She never complained or evidenced self pity. Many of us would just give up and go into a funk, but not her.
Always she was positive and full of gratitude. At her 100th birthday party, she was just delighted and amazed that people would gather to celebrate her life. Her gentle smile permeated the room all afternoon.
Shortly before her death, she was heard praying out loud. This she had never done before. What was she saying, over and over again? “He is in me, and I am in Him. He is in me, and I am in Him.”
Sister Miriam was born on October 19, 1909, in Seattle, Washington, to Irene Maud (Able) and Louis Kahl, and baptized Evelyn Marie. In her autobiography, she wrote of the early Dominican presence in her life. Her parents belonged to Blessed Sacrament Parish, but because the church had not yet been built, the assigned pastor, a Dominican priest, baptized her at home. Four years later, her brother Robert was born, completing the family.
Evelyn began her education at Green Lake Public School. There she attended kindergarten, first, and second grades. A church and school had been built in Blessed Sacrament Parish, and she spent the next years at Blessed Sacrament School, then attended St. Benedict School for a few years, and returned to Blessed Sacrament, graduating from Blessed Sacrament High School in 1927. She wrote, “I was surrounded by Dominican sisters and priests, whom I respected and loved.”
Eventually she realized that she was being called to be a Dominican, and she entered the postulate in Everett on August 14, 1927, two months before her eighteenth birthday. She received the habit and her religious name on April 10, 1928, and professed her first vows on April 11, 1929.
Almost immediately she was sent to Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Everett, where she served as a substitute teacher in fifth grade for the balance of that school year. For the next three years she taught at St. Mary School in Aberdeen, a year with third and fourth graders and two years with fifth and sixth graders. Her next assignment sent her to Holy Angels High School in Seattle as a freshman teacher and assistant boarding-school mistress.
Because of a need for sisters to staff the Congregation hospitals, in 1934 she was among the sisters sent to the School of Nursing at St. Joseph Hospital. There she spent the next three years. Upon graduation she was licensed as a Registered Nurse, and she remained there to help in the surgery department. In 1940 she was transferred to St. Helen Hospital in Chehalis, where she was a nurse for three years, then served as superintendent and community superior until 1949. She wrote, “These were challenging war-time years, with rationing, black-outs, baby booms, high census, and help in short supply.” She found, however, that the sisters and lay personnel were “beyond compare.”
In 1949 she enrolled in the nursing program at the College of St. Teresa in Winona, Minnesota, where she not only studied but also served as house mother for the Junior Dominican Group; and in 1951 she received a bachelor’s degree in nursing administration. Again assigned to St. Joseph Hospital in Aberdeen, she was nurse there for a year, served two years as director of nursing, then thirteen years as hospital administrator. During this time she was elected Second General Councilor at the General Chapter, and re-elected in 1958 and 1964.
She took what she called a “semi-sabbatical” in 1967. Preparation for the General Chapter following Vatican II was going on at that time.
The high point of this time for me, however, was being sent to spend three weeks at Christmas with our sisters, newly established at their clinic at Father Wasson’s Orphanage in Acolam, north of Mexico City. It was probably the most inspiring Christmas gift I ever received.
In 1968, after a nursing refresher course in long-term care/rehabilitation at Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup, Washington, she was re-assigned to St. Helen Hospital as head nurse for a long-term/extended care unit called Rosary Manor. She wrote, “I think I learned more than I taught about love, patience, and compassion from staff and patients.” She was also elected a member of the St. Joseph Hospital Advisory Board.
After ten years in this work, she decided that she needed a change of pace. She took a short vacation, and then returned to St. Helen Hospital as a part-time clerk in the medical records department and as sacristan. In 1983 the Sisters of Providence purchased the hospital, and she continued working there. The Sisters of Providence bought Centralia General Hospital in 1988, merged it with St. Helen, and named it Providence Centralia-Chehalis. Sister Miriam continued her ministry there until December 1999, the last three years as a volunteer. She was ninety years of age when she left.
In January 2000 she became a resident at Assumption Convent in Seattle, and in 2007 she moved to St. Joseph Residence in Seattle, where she died on January 20, 2010.
In Adrian, on January 23, before the community Mass in St. Catherine Chapel, Sister Jo Gaugier, Holy Rosary Chapter Prioress, read some of the remembrances from the Seattle wake and funeral to the assembled Adrian sisters.
Sister Mary White, a former Edmonds Dominican who is now living in Adrian, shared some remembrances.
My first experience with Sister Miriam was when I was a novice. She had just finished a course . . . and the community was giving her a rest before going back to work. She was asked to take the Novice Mistress’s place while she was away at summer school in California.
It was a community custom to sing the Litany of St. Dominic for St. Dominic’s Day. We, as a group, were not known for our singing ability, so we were trying to sing it on our own. By the fourth invocation we were laughing so hard that we could not continue. Finally, Sister Miriam gave up and said that we could recite it.
One visiting day, the dad of one of the novices gave us a five-gallon bucket of ice cream. Since Sister Miriam was not there, we ATE THE WHOLE THING. Several days later, Sister Miriam said, “Let’s have some of that ice cream.” There was dead silence.
When most of us began to wear secular dress, Sister Miriam continued to wear a modified habit. The day before the merger, we Edmonds Dominicans had a farewell dinner at one of the local restaurants. We were all gathered when Sister Miriam arrived. She had her hair beautifully done and was wearing a beautiful flowered dress. Her comment was, “Since everything else is changing, I might as well change with you.” She never wore her habit again.
In later years, I experienced Sister Miriam as efficient but gentle, welcoming, smiling, attentive, a beautiful soul. Even though she could hear very little, she would listen attentively to what each person was saying. She always seemed happy to see anyone who came to see her.
Sister Miriam’s life was long and fruitful, filled with service of God and God’s people. As Sister Francine said, “Truly, ‘blessed is she who has died in the Lord. Let her find rest from her labors, for her works accompany her.’”