Sisters of Ogden’s Mount Benedict Monastery

Sisters of Ogden’s Mount Benedict Monastery

By KATHRYN L. MACKAY

The American West is very religiously diverse, and it has the greatest percentage of people unaffiliated with a particular religion. Utah is the exception with the largest percentage of people affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) or Mormons. The state also has the lowest percentage of people who are unaffiliated with a particular church. The most prominent religion in the rest of the West is Catholicism. The Catholic Church has made a significant contribution in the West through the establishment of hospitals operated by several orders of sisters. St. Benedict’s Hospital in Ogden was one owned and operated by Benedictine Sisters. The community of sisters presents an unique study of inter-religious relations and the influence a small religious community can have on a dominant faith. The history of this community also demonstrates the changing experiences of religious women in post World War II American West. 1

Sisters Mary Margaret Clifford church. The most prominent religion in the and Estelle Nordick at the 1946 rest of the West is Catholicism. The Catholic Church has made a significant contribution opening of St. Benedict’s Hospital.

Mount Benedict Monastery is one of twenty-six Benedictine monasteries of women currently existing west of the Mississippi River. 2 Benedictines follow the Rule of St. Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia who founded the abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy around 529. The Rule is a guide for persons living consecrated lives in autonomous communities. St. Benedict’s Rule is summed up in the current motto of the Benedictine Confederation: “peace” [pax] and the traditional “pray and work” [ora et labora]. 3 Benedictine sisters in the United States are not “enclosed nuns,” but are rather “active nuns,” involved in a variety of public efforts to promote social justice, peace, education, and sustainable communities. They often define themselves as following the example of St. Benedict who “taught the nobility of any and all work when done for the love of Christ.” 4

What became Mount Benedict Monastery was established in the 1940s to support the work of the Catholic sisters’ endeavors to improve health care in northern Utah by founding St. Benedict’s Hospital in Ogden. This community of women religious was part of the largest health care network then in the United States. The network was developed during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and by 1917 Catholic hospitals accounted for half of the American health care system. 5 The women religious who came to Ogden understood themselves to be informed by personal callings and institutional agendas, by skilled practice and evangelizing activities, by pragmatic, vocation-driven work, and by deeply religious expression.

Much of the history of these highly educated women and the influence they have had in the area has been preserved in a number of oral interviews. These personal narratives express the sisters’ understanding of their work and the lore which serve to define and confirm their community as well as enlightening us of the Catholic Church’s involvement in formal health care in Utah. And the interviews include stories, which by their repetition serve to position this Catholic enclave in Mormon Utah. 6

Catholic health care in Utah began in 1875 when the Sisters of the Holy Cross from St. Mary’s Convent in Notre Dame, Indiana, opened a hospital in Salt Lake City. A year later the Sisters of the Holy Cross established St. John’s Hospital to serve the miners at Silver Reef in southwestern Utah. After St. John’s Hospital closed in 1885, the sisters operated St. Lawrence Hospital in Ogden for a short time (1887-1888) to care for employees of the Union Pacific Railroad and, eventually, the workers of the Southern Pacific Railroad. (Japanese working on the Southern Pacific Railroad received medical care at a segregated hospital established in 1905.) Union Pacific provided the building, medicine, and surgical supplies, and five dollars a week for each of its workers who was cared for. In return the sisters provided nursing care, food, cleaning, and maintenance of the property. The Sisters of the Holy Cross also served as educators at the Sacred Heart Academy, which was opened in Ogden in 1878. 7

Benedictine Sisters gathered around a piano for entertainment.

From the 1890s to the end of 1910, professional health care in Ogden was available at several facilities. The Union Pacific Hospital continued to provide hospital care in Ogden until the General Hospital was organized by a group of physicians in 1896. They then took over the medical care of railroad employees. A “City Hospital” existed in the 1890s, and for a short time (1896-1897), a county hospital operated in the basement of the court house. In 1899 a hospital was built at the State School for the Deaf and Blind. Japanese working on the Southern Pacific Railroad received medical care at a segregated hospital established in 1905. An emergency hospital was also built by the Harriman railroad system at the Union depot in 1906. 8

There was an attempt to establish another hospital managed by Catholic sisters in 1909; however, that effort stalled when in 1909 Annie Taylor, widow of Thomas D. Dee, and their children announced they would build a hospital in Ogden as his memorial in the Ogden community. Dee (1844-1905) was a prominent Ogden entrepreneur, promoter, and LDS leader who had helped establish the very successful Utah Construction Company. Patients from the Ogden General Hospital were transferred to the Dee Hospital in December 1910. Five years later the financially troubled hospital was taken over by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 9

The sisters enjoyed hiking in the canyons close to the hospital.

By the 1940s with the outbreak of World War II, the Dee Hospital was inadequate to serve patient needs of a growing population in the greater Ogden area when the United States War Department expanded several military installations including the Ogden Air Depot in 1939, which later became Hill Air Force Base in 1945. 10 By 1943 more than 22,000 military and civilian workers were employed at the Ogden Air Depot and a large majority of them came from outside the state. Two years earlier the War Department built a seventy-five bed health care facility for those working at the Ogden Air Depot and other nearby military instillations.

After the war both civilian and military personnel at the base were greatly reduced, but the number of workers—both civilian and military—grew steadily as the Cold War intensified. By the 1970s, the base was Utah’s largest single employer. 11

A survey of Weber County’s medical needs by the Federal Bureau of Public Health wasconducted in 1940 which reported that the availability of 1.9 hospital beds per one thousand persons was far below the national average of four hospital beds. The next year the War Department announced it would support building a new hospital rather than expanding the existing Dee Hospital. Lacking all of the necessary financial resources for a new civilian hospital, the Weber County Commission, the Weber Medical Association, and the Ogden Chamber of Commerce asked Monsignor Wilfrid J. Giroux, pastor of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church to locate a group of Catholic sisters who would build and manage a new hospital in Ogden. Giroux’s first effort in 1942 was to invite the Sisters of St. Francis of Denver. His invitation was refused when the Federal Works Agency declared that the best it could offer in support of the project was to fund the building of a one-story temporary building. However, the Sisters of St. Benedict of St. Joseph, Minnesota, expressed a willingness to come to Ogden to build, staff, and operate a hospital. 12

Once again, there was to be a Catholic hospital in Ogden. And, just as Catholic involvement in health care in nineteenth century Utah was linked to the expansion of railroads and mining which attracted non-Mormons to the territory, so Catholic involvement in the twentieth century was linked to an expansion of military facilities in the state which brought in another influx of non-Mormons.

The story of Giroux’s success in convincing the Benedictine Sisters to come to Ogden is often told by them. The earliest recorded version is by Sister Estelle Nordick, one of the first sisters who came to Ogden. She served as the purchasing agent for St. Benedict’s hospital.

When the Franciscans withdrew, Monsignor Giroux took the Catholic Directory and scanned the list of names of religious orders of women. He went through the A’s and the B’s until he found listed a Benedictine convent with over 1,200 sisters. He said to himself,“If they have 1,200 sisters and do manage hospitals, they can spare some for this Mormon territory”’ He wrote to mother Rosamond Pratschner, O.S.B., of St. Benedict’s Priory, St. Joseph, Minnesota, asking if her community would be interested. Mother Rosamond has since said that at the time she had no intention of coming west, but she did write that the project sounded interesting. A week later the front doorbell rang at St. Benedict’s Convent and there stood Monsignor Giroux who said;“I came to get my sisters.”

Sister Mary Margaret Clifford, administrator of the hospital, added: “Many people ask us how we ever got into Ogden since Catholics are in such a minority. Well, I tell them, the choice was either a government hospital or the sisters; so they chose what they thought was the lesser of two evils.” 13

Bishop Duane Hunt of the Diocese of Salt Lake was also very enthusiastic about the possibilities for the new hospital. He wrote Mother Rosamond that “a Catholic hospital is the finest missionary agency which the church can have.”The sisters understood it as an “adventure into a state not yet penetrated . . . to any great extent by Catholics, ...just the aspect that appealed to the missionary zeal of the majority of the sisters.” 14

Wartime shortages delayed construction. However, funds of $929,000 were raised from the Federal Works Agency; $28,000 came from members of St. Joseph Parish, $25,000 from the National Board for Infantile Paralysis, $20,000 from Ogden Community Chest, and the balance of the $1.5 million needed to landscape the hospital and buy new equipment was provided by the Sisters of St. Benedict. The site was blessed, ground broken, and Benedictine medals were placed in the concrete footings and foundation in August 1944.The hospital was located at the top of 30th Street only about a mile from the Dee Hospital, a location requested by area physicians so that they could conveniently work at both hospitals. Sister Myron McGinley recalled that before the decision was made to locate their hospital in Ogden rather than in Roy nearer the air force base, she was sent to look at the area. She determined that a downtown location was too noisy and encouraged Monsignor Giroux to find property “on the hill,” even though some in the community “didn’t think anybody would go that far to a hospital.” 15 The first building completed at the new location was the nurses’ residence. High Mass was celebrated July 11, 1945. The organ used for the music was borrowed from the Italian soldiers’ prison camp near by. 16

Sister Victorine with a polio patient, 1950.

One year later, on September 18, some seven thousand visitors toured the completed hospital.That day, Mark Lewis of Ogden radio station KLO toured the hospital and interviewed various sisters and lay nurses. His broadcast clearly informed the public about the modernity of the facilities and the professional training of the staff. Lewis seemed genuinely surprised at the high level of education of the sisters, some holding degrees from Marquette University, St. Louis University and elsewhere. Lewis in his interview asked Sister Myron if there was any special reason so many of the sisters were trained at St. Louis University. “Yes,” was her pert reply, “St. Louis has one of the finest medical schools in the country.” 17

Sister Benora Gaida described the work between the completion of construction in May and the opening of the hospital in September as: “... hard work,...terribly hard work. We did everything from scraping all the windows, washing the windows, cleaning the bath rooms, putting up beds, and putting on mattresses and springs and everything.” Sister Estelle Nordick explained that construction workers “laid the tile, and we went up and scrubbed, on hands and knees, during the hot summer, no air conditioning.... The men on construction couldn’t believe it...long skirts, you know, ...all dressed up in black.” “We even made linens for the operating room,” recalled Sister Elizabeth Slaughter. Sister Herena Mueller described evenings when the ladies of St. Joseph’s parish would join the sisters in sewing “we made drapes, and drapes, and drapes.” In fact, the local Catholic community rallied to help complete the hospital. Sister Herena noted: “St. Joseph’s was very gracious in offering all their young people to help us.” 18

Benedictine Sisters have long been part of a tradition of educated women, and also part of a long history of women’s leadership in Catholic organizations. They have held voting power in the Catholic Hospital Association (CHA) since it was organized in 1915. CHA’s purpose is to promote “scientific efficiency and economy in hospital management.” 19 Sisters in hospitals work directly in the various areas of medical care as well as hospital administrators and business managers. These were not stereotypic passive religious women, but skilled, assertive entrepreneurs in the medical marketplace. The success of Ogden’s St Benedict’s Hospital was founded on sisters who were highly trained and skilled in a well-equipped facility, and selfless in the care of their patients. 20

St. Benedict’s Hospital, which opened in 1946,was an up-to-date hospital with a central oxygen distribution system, central food serving, germicidal lamps, radiant heating floors, and air exchange throughout the corridors. It had the only isolation ward in northern Utah, which was filled to capacity with patients from Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah during the polio crisis of 1946-1949. The area’s first orthopedic surgeon joined the staff in 1946. A psychiatric unit was opened in 1949 and renovated in the 1960s to care for alcohol and chemical dependent patients (ACT). The first social service department in a private Utah hospital was created in 1950; an out-patient clinic for low-income patients operated from 1949 to 1966. The hospital’s modern facilities enabled doctors to perform there the first exsanguination in Utah in 1949. The next year, the first oxygen “Cascade” system in the area was installed. 21

The presence of such a modern facility impacted the other hospital in Ogden. According to Sister Estelle Nordick, Mrs. Lucille Taylor, Director of the Dee Hospital School of Nursing, advised Sister Mary Margaret not to open all the services at St. Benedict’s because she felt sure the sisters would be forced to close the hospital within a month. 22

Sister Elizabeth Slaughter recalled that some Mormons were “...very disturbed to think that Catholics were coming in to take over. Because they had a whole wing in their hospital they couldn’t open. They didn’t have the personnel to manage. They couldn’t understand how we could come and start a hospital and have people.” Sister Keith Eickhoff was more circumspect: “I found the Mormons as clannish in Utah as the Catholics were in Minnesota. Mormons seemed protective of their territory and took good care of their own people. We called their elders when requested by patients and tried to meet their spiritual needs.” 23

Sister Estelle in the hospital greenhouse, c. 1950.

Sister Mary Margaret suspected that Mormons were being advised in their church meetings to go to their own church-supported hospital. 24 Even as St. Benedict’s was about to open, Sister Estelle Nordick remembered that during June 1945, a petition was carried house to house in Ogden requesting that federal aid for the Catholic hospital be cut off. She also remembered that Monsignor Giroux flew to Washington, D. C. to plead the hospital’s cause. 25

St. Benedict’s did open and by 1951 Dee Hospital was, itself, in precarious financial conditions. Kenneth E. Knapp was hired as Dee’s new administrator and invited community service organizations to lease space in the building. He consolidated departments and reduced personnel improving the hospital’s financial condition. A year later in April 1952, the Board of Trustees approved a ten-year modernization program. In 1958, plans to build a new hospital were announced. 26

Both hospitals operated schools of nursing. The Dee Hospital’s nursing school began in 1910 and during its forty-five years, 720 students became nurses. 27 In 1953 the Dee Hospital School of Nursing developed a two-year nursing course based at Weber State College and two years later graduated its last class of nurses. The St. Benedict’s School of Nursing opened in April 1947 offering a three-year hospital based training program. The nurses’ building offered living accommodations for 110 students; most graduating classes were between thirteen and twenty-five graduates. By the 1960s, the sisters deemed it impractical to continue their school and in 1966 St. Benedict’s School of Nursing became the center of operations of the Weber State College Practical Nurse program. The last class at St. Benedict’s graduated in 1968. During the nineteen years of the school’s existence 605 students were enrolled of whom 357 graduated. 28

Sister Berno capping a graduate from St. Benedict’s School of Nursing, 1951.

Very early on there was a great deal of professional cooperation between the staffs of the two hospitals. Sister Ortude and Monsignor Giroux consulted many times with Dee Hospital staff regarding equipment and furnishings. However, there were tensions between the sisters and local Mormons. Stories about Mormon reactions to the nuns are told often by the sisters–stories by which they defined their differences from the Mormons even as they shared mutual misunderstandings of tenets of faith. Sister Benora Gaida remembered that, “Sister Mary Margaret and Sister Estelle used to go downtown and the people would just turn around in the street and gawk at them.” Sister Estelle recalled,“people would peek out of doors at us, ...and the children would say, ‘Here they come; here they come,’ and run for dear life.” “Actually they [Mormon male staff] pitied us because we were nuns,” Sister Herena noted, “since we were not married, we were not ever going to have children, and for that reason we could not possibly hope to attain eternal happiness. Because they felt bad for us (evidently they liked us), some of the men sealed us to themselves... a mystical marriage in the temple, or a spiritual marriage.” 29

There were other Catholic sisters in Ogden as well. Sisters of the Holy Cross had operated Sacred Heart Academy from 1878 to 1937, and staffed St. Joseph High School from 1875 to 1979. In fact, the Benedictine sisters lived with the Holy Cross sisters at the Sacred Heart building on 25th Street, which became their “provincial house, ” until the nurses’ residence was built and the Benedictine sisters moved there. However, the Benedictine sisters were more visible in the community particularly after the hospital opened. Over the years they cared for thousands of people at the hospital and additional thousands of others who came to the hospital to visit patients. In addition the sisters held parenting classes and worked closely with community volunteers. The vast majority of those persons hold fond memories of the care the sisters gave them. One example provides us with such memories. Colleen Whitley remembered as a child being stricken with polio. “I had polio and spent two weeks in St. Benedict’s hospital, then went back for follow-ups and physical therapy for another year. I love and adore those good sisters. I am walking around today because several of them pulled me through.” 30

The Benedictine sisters were also the only community of religious to daily recite liturgical offices, the Catholic system of public worship, which often attracted lay members. The sisters worked hard to create a friendly atmosphere in the hospital. The sisters organized Christmas parties for the doctors, interns, and their children. Doctors also enjoyed periodic breakfasts prepared by the sisters and there were staff picnics. Sister Anne Malerich remembers “the place as a joyful place. The employees were upbeat and the sisters were too. I remember it as a happy place to be.” Sister Rebecca Schmidt’s analysis was that “we had to get to know the people and they had to get to know us. So, I think that’s one of the things that contributed to the sense of community....And they learned to know us as people. And they learned to know us as dedicated people. I think they appreciated that very much.” Sister Giovanni Bienick declared: “I had eleven wonderful years in Utah. The people were so nice. We enjoyed them. They were nice to us and we were nice to them.” 31

The sisters were heirs to generations of anti-Catholic sentiments in the United States. Just three years after St. Benedict’s opened another wave of anti-Catholicism was provoked by various publications, some were bestsellers. For example, Paul Blanshard in his American Freedom and Catholic Power, was harshly critical of the Catholic Church’s involvement in public life, reserving some of his most negative commentary for the church’s involvement in medicine, particularly in relation to the care of pregnant women who might need therapeutic abortions to save their lives. 32

Sister Mary Patrick at the 1974 groundbreaking for the new St. Benedict’s.

Mormons had their own views about the Catholic Church. A popular book in the 1960s was Mormon Doctrine written by Bruce R. McConkie. He characterized the Catholic Church as the “great and abominable,” church. His book was revised in 1966, which eliminated this statement. From the perspective of the Benedictine Sisters, it was their management or ownership of other hospitals in other parts of Utah that caused the most animosity. In March 1960, the Sevier Valley Hospital and nursing home in Richfield was put up for sale by its owner Dan Manning. He had offered the property to the LDS church but at the time they were not interested in acquiring another small hospital. Manning then contacted Bishop Joseph Lennox Federal who first offered the property to the Sisters of the Holy Cross. After they declined to acquire the hospital and nursing home, the Sisters of St. Benedict agreed to take on the project. Bishop Federal was hopeful that the Catholic Church would then have a foothold in southern Utah. They renamed the hospital St. Michael’s, and Sister Arles Silbernick agreed to become the administrator of the hospital and superior of the community. 33

Sister Arles recalled that members of the Richfield community “used to drive up and down by the convent and shout, ‘Get out of here, you old devils.’” Sister Arles mused: “It seems strange that the highest Mormon authorities, not only in Richfield but throughout Utah and Idaho were still very concerned and worked up about less than a half dozen Catholic Benedictine nuns who came to Richfield to minister to sick and aged Mormons.”234 Under pressure the sisters sold the hospital to the LDS church after only three years of operations. The sisters’ work in Richfield did not go unnoticed or unappreciated however. The editors of the Richfield Reaper after the sisters left Richfield wrote: “It is doubtful that anyone can deny the Sisters have done a marvelous job in providing the finest medical care and service possible in a hospital the size of St. Michael’s. They had been cooperative in the community and lived up to their name and reputation as ‘angels of mercy.’ The community owes them a debt of gratitude.” 35

By the 1970s, the Benedictine Sisters in Ogden needed a new or remodeled hospital and a medical arts building. However, the hospital’s location lacked sufficient acreage for an additional building. A new site was found in Washington Terrace, just south of Ogden. The new hospital completed in 1977 was modern, efficient, and well-staffed. However, the presence of the sisters was reduced. Like Catholic orders elsewhere, the motherhouse struggled to provide enough sisters for its many ministries. A lay admi-nistrator, Robert Eisleben, was hired to oversee the new hospital.

The first St. Benedict’s Hospital, which opened in 1946, occurred at a time of greater participation of women joining religious orders. During the peak years of the 1950s, the financial and managerial innovations of Catholic sisters made it possible for them to own and manage one out of every five hospital beds in the United States. In 1968 there were 179,974 sisters in various orders, an all-time high. However, in the late 1960s the number of Catholic women who entered orders began to decline. The number of men entering the priesthood also began to decline. Reasons for that decline are beyond the scope of this paper. However, the decline affected all orders in the United States, including the Benedictines. 36

Despite the decline in their numbers, sisters still worked at St. Benedict’s Hospital as trained medical professionals. Good health care was more than medicine and surgery. They remained religious women. In fact, during the 1970s, the sisters considered establishing a dependent priory. After studying the matter and following a tradition among Benedictines, the Utah sisters applied in January 1980 to the Council of St. Benedict’s Convent in St. Joseph, Minnesota, for dependent status. For thirty-five years, the ministry in Utah, which had expanded from health care to teaching in high schools and working in the diocesan pastoral center, was considered a mission of the motherhouse community. Sixteen sisters residing in Utah signed the covenant agreement with the full realization that they would, at some time in the future, make a request to become an independent, autonomous monastery. 37 The independent monastery became a reality on August 21, 1994, with eleven founding members.

A pylon marked the entrance to the New St. Benedict’s Hospital.

In the intervening years, the sisters continued Catholic health care in northern Utah by forming in 1982 St. Benedict’s Health System, a holding company, which provided coordination of services to seven separately incorporated subsidiaries. This arrangement proved to be a financial and management hardship making it difficult to economically sustain the hospital. The new St. Benedict’s Hospital continued to be regarded as one of the best in the region. Additional health services including the Val A. Browning Cancer Treatment Center, the Willard L. Eccles Eye Center, the Eccles Critical Care Unit, a neonatal intensive care unit, and a Women’s and Children’s Center were added as successful fund drives were completed. However, these new services placed increasing financial and managerial challenges for the sisters.

In 1986, hoping to at least keep a Catholic hospital open in Ogden, the Sisters of St. Benedict negotiated a joint sponsorship with the Holy Cross Health System, which would operate the hospital as part of the Holy Cross Health System. The Benedictine sisters remained on the hospital board and retained their jobs at their hospital. Thinking that they had protected the Catholic character of their hospital, it was emotionally wrenching for them when in October 1993 the Sisters of the Holy Cross announced that they were selling all of the Holy Cross Health Care facilities in Utah to a secular hospital corporation, Health Trust Inc. After a great deal of controversy, the sale was completed in September 1994. Within another year, St. Benedict’s became the Columbia Ogden Regional Medical Center, a non-Catholic, for-profit, and proprietary hospital. 38

Benedictine Sisters on the occasion of Sister Francis' golden jubilee, 1986.

The selling of health-care facilities was repeated across the country as many religious denominations relinquished their roles in health care, thereby eroding the “ecclesiastical” context of hospitals.The relinquishment of ownership and management of religious-based hospitals occurred in Utah as well. The Episcopal Diocese, owner of St. Mark’s Hospital, which was opened in Salt Lake City in 1872, sold the hospital to Hospital Corporation of America in 1988. The LDS church, owner of several community-based hospitals divested its hospitals to the newly formed Intermountain Health Care, a non-profit corporation established in the 1970s.The ethos of social justice which distinguished these religious institutions gave way to an ethos of business. For Catholic sisters this meant even more, it was about identity and purpose. Who were they if they were not care-givers? What was their calling now? How could the Benedictines continue to follow the rule of St. Benedict emblazoned on the pylon in front of the hospital:“ To care for the sick as though they were Christ themselves”?

Founding members of Mount Benedict Monastery, 1994. Back row, from left to right: Sisters Virgene, Marilyn, Iris, Stephanie, Jeremia, Francis, Mary, Jean. Front row, left to right: Sisters Luke, Danile, Judine.

The answer to these questions for the Sisters of St. Benedict was to sustain their work to make Ogden a healthy community--spiritually and physically--by remaining actively involved in that community. The sisters had gone ahead with the work to establish an autonomous priory. Of the sixteen original signers of the 1980 covenant agreement, eleven ultimately requested independence. Sister Luke Hoschette explained: “[T]here continued to be need for sisters to give service to the church in Utah. With the decreasing number of active sisters in the Motherhouse community, the future of the Benedictine Utah Apostolate rest[ed] in the sinking of its roots in the local church.” 39

Seven of the sisters who remained in Utah had family ties in Minnesota. However, as Sister Stephanie Mongeon explained: “We believed that we were being called to establish a permanent presence here. And we did everything we could to become financially stable, with good spiritual growth, and with many efforts to increase membership.” Sister Judine Suter added professional development reasons for remaining:

I was born and raised and went to school in such a Catholic atmosphere. And to come here where I was a minority, it was quite a shock to my system. But by 1980, I was feeling pretty much at home here. So I wanted to be a missionary here and continue. And I always wanted to do something for the desperate. I had begun to work with those who were dependent on drugs and alcohol [the ACT unit].This was taking care of the most desperate. They needed more than food and shelter. They needed something much deeper. And so, I thought, this is just right....It was a privilege to work with the “challenging.” 40

With funds saved from their salaries and proceeds from the sale of the hospital, the sisters built a new and spacious accommodation for themselves as well as offices and meeting space for the St. Benedict’s Foundation and a chapel where they continued their daily recital of liturigical prayers as they had done since the 1940s. 41 Some sisters worked at the hospital even after it was sold and their salaries continued to sustain the community as a whole. 42 Other sisters now volunteered at the hospital, doing all they could to provide the same kind of care to patients for which the Benedictines were known.

St. Benedict’s Foundation which had been established in the 1970s to support health care through the hospital now funded projects that related to women, children, and families in crisis, scholarships at Weber State University, and expanded pastoral services. The mission statement explains that the “Foundation, sponsored by the Sisters of St. Benedict, strives to enrich and nurture families in Northern Utah by supporting programs that create hope for the future.” 43

It is their hope for the future that continues to sustain the sisters of Mount Benedict Monastery. When independent status was granted the community in 1994, there were eleven sisters. Three sisters have since died and the young woman who became part of the community for a few years recently left before taking her final vows. However, the sisters believe that their presence in Utah has made a difference. As Sister Luke explains: “We believe that we can be a viable witness and bring a sense of stability which is a unique Benedictine charisma, for as long as God wants....We believe if we live out the spirit of St. Benedict, our witness will be a dynamic force to vitalize the lives and works of men and women in Utah.” 44

Notes

Kathryn L. MacKay is professor of history at Weber State University.

1 See Ferenc Morton Szasz, Religion in the American West (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000); Clifford Grammich, “Many Faiths of Many Regions: Continuities and Changes Among Religious Adherents Across U.S. Counties,” Working Paper 211 (RAND Labor and Population, December 2004) in http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR211/ (Accessed May 30, 2008); U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2008), in http://religions.pewforum.org/reports (Accessed May 30, 2008).

2 See: Benedictines in the United States, Saint Leo Abbey, 2004, http://www.saintleoabbey.org/benedictinelinks.htm (Accessed May 10, 2008). There are fifty Benedictine priories (convents) in the United States which trace their origins from the first Benedictine convent established in St. Mary’s, Pennsylvania, in 1852. The founding nuns came from St. Walburg (Walburg’s) Abbey in Eichstatt, Bavaria, at the invitation of Father Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B., to teach the children of the German immigrants.

Other sisters went from St.Walburg’s to St. Cloud, Minnesota, in 1857, moving to St. Joseph in 1863. In addition to establishing their community, which became St. Benedict’s Monastery, they also founded Saint Benedict’s Academy in 1878, which evolved into the College of Saint Benedict in 1913. The sisters established homes for the elderly and six hospitals, including the St. Cloud Hospital.

In time, eleven “daughter” monasteries were founded by members of St. Benedict’s Monastery, four in other countries. They form the St Benedict Federation, which includes Mount Benedict in Ogden. See Ann Kessler, Benedictine Men & Women of Courage: Roots and History (Yankton, SD: Sacred Heart Monastery, 1996) in http://sacredfaith.org/benedictine.aspx

3 See Timothy Fry, O.S.B. translator, RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981); The Order of Saint Benedict in http://www.osb.org/.

4 See Sister Mary Margaret, O.S.B., “On the Occasion of the Hundredth Anniversary of our Benedictine Convent,” unpublished pamphlet, 1957, Mount Benedict Archives, Mount Benedict Monastery, Ogden.

5 Sioban Nelsen, Say Little, Do Much, Nurses, Nuns and Hospitals in the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 151. By 1920, 90,000 American women religious, belonging to 300 different congregations, served in 50 women’s colleges, 500 hospitals, and 6,000 parochial schools attended by 1.7 million school children. See Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith, Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836-1920 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 2; and M. Ursula Stepsis and Dolores Liptak, eds. Pioneer Healers: The History of Women Religious in American Health Care (New York: Crossroad, 1989.)

6 In 1960, Father Colman Barry, the historian for the Benedictine St. John’s University, Minnesota, interviewed five of the sisters who came to Utah in 1946; he called them “pioneers.” In 1980, Robert Giacovelli, who was then the director of the St. Benedict’s Foundation, which had been established in 1975 to raise funds for hospital modernization, interviewed fourteen of the nineteen sisters who had been in the hospital at its opening. In 2003, this author and a student, Kathryn Burnside, with funds secured from Weber State University, interviewed twenty-seven of the 129 Benedictine sisters who had spent some time in Ogden. The above interviews were all done at the motherhouse in St. Joseph, Minnesota. Archivists there have been for several years conducting oral interviews of the members. An additional twenty interviews of the Mount Benedict Monastery sisters and of some physicians, nurses, and staff who had worked at the hospital were conducted by this author in 2004 and 2005 with support from the Utah State Historical Society and the Utah Humanities Council. Transcripts of the above interviews are available at the Mount Benedict Archives.

7 See: Sisters of the Holy Cross, Holy Cross Ministries http://www.holycrossministries.org/- History/History.html (Accessed May 10, 2008); Bernice Maher Mooney and Msgr. J. Terrence Fitzgerald, Salt of the Earth:The History of the Catholic Church in Utah 1776-2007, 3rd ed. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008), 88. The Union Pacific Railroad Company had converted one of their buildings into a hospital in 1883 and hired physicians to work out of that facility. See: Richard Roberts and Richard Sadler, History of Weber County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Weber County Commission, 1997), 217. See also: Christopher J. Kauffman, Ministry and Meaning, A Religious History of Catholic Health Care in the United States (New York:The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1995), 113.

8 Ogden Standard Examiner “Died at the City Hospital,” December 30, 1890, “Financial Statement of Ogden City,” August 31,1892,“Ogden Medical and Surgical Hospital,” November 21,1896,“The County Hospital,” January 7, 1897,“The Old Railroad Hospital,” December 3, 1898,“Splendid Hospital Building,” December 9, 1899, “Hospital in Ogden for Japs,” April 12, 1905, “A Hospital for this City,” October 3, 1905, “Temporary R.R. Hospital,” December 24, 1906. These newspaper articles are also found at http://www.lib.utah.edu/digital/unews/ose.html

9 Intermountain Health Care,“Hospital History,” http://intermountainhealthcare.org/xp/public/mckaydee/aboutus/history/ (Accessed June 5, 2008). In 1963 the hospital was re-named McKay-Dee in honor of David O. McKay, then president of the LDS church.The LDS church continued to operate the hospital until 1976 when it divested itself of its fifteen hospitals which became part of Intermountain Health Care.

10 Helen Rice, History of Ogden Air Materiel Area, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, 1934-1960,Volume I (Air Force Logistics Command, 1963), 14-15.The Depot Hospital was reduced to dispensary-type operation in January 1946 with the conclusion of the war.

11 See J. Whitney Hanks, Hill Air Force Base, Impact on Utah’s Economy (Salt Lake City: Bureau of Economic and Business Research, University of Utah, 1974).

12 See Monsignor W.J. Giroux, Radio Address, KLO, June 25,1945, Mount Benedict Archives.

13 “A Benedictine Apostolate Among the Mormons,” The American Benedictine Review 11(1960): 255- 268. This article was based on a series of interview conducted July 20,1960, by Father Coleman Barry with Sisters Herena Mueller, Margaret Clifford, Estelle Nordick, Edicta Zierden, and Mary Gerald Maiers, who were among the first nineteen sisters who established the hospital and the convent. A transcript of the interview is available at Mount Benedict Archives. Sister Estelle repeated the story in her unpublished manuscript, “St. Benedict’s Hospital, Ogden, Utah, Becomes a Reality,” 1977, Mount Benedict Archives. Sister Myron McGinley told the story to Robert Giacovelli in 1980; she added: “We were a big, strong community; so the nurses and all were anxious to go out, and the climate was so beautiful and the families were so good to us.” Sister Myron McGinley, interviewed by Robert Giacovelli, 1980.Transcript available at Mount Benedict Archives.

14 Quoted in M. Grace McDonald, O.S.B., With Lamps Burning (St. Joseph, MN: Saint Benedict’s Priory Press, 1957), 174.

15 Sister Ortude Nester, Notes, July 19, 1944 - October 12, 1945; Monsignor W.J. Giroux, Radio Address, KLO, June 25,1945, Mount Benedict Archives. According to Sister Mary Margaret, sixty-four local doctors joined the hospital staff and the sisters hired their own radiologist and pathologist. (Only one of the doctors, Frances Conroy, was Catholic.) Transcript of KLO interview with Benedictine Sisters, September, 10, 1946, Mount Benedict Archives.

Sister Myron and Monsignor Giroux were also responsible for establishing a Trappist Monastery in Huntsville, east of Ogden. Sister Myron’s brother Gerard who was a Trappist in Kentucky wrote his sister asking about making a new foundation. She quickly wrote to him and “told him all about Utah… Frederick Dunn, the abbot from Kentucky, came out. He would always stay at the hospital.” However, Sister Myron’s brother never did come to Utah, but was sent to establish a community in New York.

Over the years relations between the Trappists and the sisters continued to be very close.The sisters did laundry for the brothers, and the Trappists supplied the sisters with fresh produce. See Myron McGinley interview by Robert Giacovelli, 1980, Mount Benedict Archives. See also Gerard McGinley, A Trappist Writes Home: Letters of Abbot Gerard McGinley (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1960.)

16 McDonald, With Lamps Burning, 174.

17 Transcript of KLO interview with Benedictine Sisters, September 10, 1945, Mount Benedict Archives. St. Louis University was founded as an Academy by the Society of Jesus in 1818, making it the oldest university west of the Mississippi. The medical department was established in 1836, graduating its first M.D. in 1839. However, in response to anti-Catholic sentiments, the medical department was separated from the university and not until 1903 was another medical school incorporated. See http://www.slu.edu. (accessed January 20, 2009).

Although nurses were trained at St. Louis, women were not admitted to the M.D. program until 1948. Official papal permission for sisters to study medicine had been granted in 1936. Most sisters trained as nurses rather than as physicians, which would have challenged religious and cultural assumptions about women’s roles. See Martha R. Clevenger, “From Lay Practitioner to Doctor of Medicine: Woman Physicians in St. Louis, 1860-1920,” Gateway Heritage, 8 (Winter1987-1988), reprinted by the Bernard Becker Medical Library, 2004, http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/mowihsp/articles/practitioner.htm (Accessed July 2, 2008). Also Bernadette McCauley, Who Shall Take Care of Our Sick? Roman Catholic Sisters and the Development of Catholic Hospitals in New York City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).

18 Sister Elizabeth Slaughter interview by Sister Etienne Flaherty April 13,1989, transcript St. Benedict Convent Archives, St. Joseph, Minnesota. Sisters Benora Gaida, Estelle Nordick, Herena Mueller interviews by Robert Giacovelli, 1980,

19 Quoted in Barbara Mann Wall, Unlikely Entrepreneurs, Catholic Sisters and the Hospital Marketplace, 1856-1925 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005),173.

20 The list of Benedictine Sisters and their assignments suggests the range of education they possessed and the many skills needed to manage a hospital and sustain their own community. Of the eighteen sisters on the hospital staff at its opening six had RN degrees and three of those also had bachelor’s degrees. Three others had BS degrees and two of those had Masters. Sister Herena Mueller was superior of the religious community and director of the x-ray department; Sister Mary Margaret Clifford was in administration of the hospital; Sister Ortude Nester was the purchasing agent before illness forced her to leave before the opening; Sister Estelle Nordick also served as purchasing agent; Sister Edicta Zierden was the surgical supervisor, Sister Mary Jude Meyer served as the medical supervisor; Sister Benora Gaida, was the medical technologist as was Sister Laetitia Griep. Samuel Slaughter was a nurse anesthetist. Sister Davora Thielen was the hospital’s business office manager; Sister Floretta Schoemer was the religious superior; Sister Vestina Bursken was the baker; Sister Edwardelle Schroeder was a nurse; Sister Philomine Lutgen was the food manager; Sister Daria Duerr served as the medical record librarian; Sister Myron McGinley replaced Sister Electa Thompson as secretary; Sister LaRose Schwartz worked in the laundry; and Sister Amos Marie Dickson was the hospital’s dietitian.The sisters also had their own seamstress, Sister Frederica Hens, worked with the complicated habits they wore at that time. See “Dedication of St. Benedict’s Hospital, Ogden, Utah, September 18, 1946,” souvenir booklet, Mount Benedict Archives. See also Sister Estelle Nordick,“St Benedict’s Hospital, Ogden,” 15.

21 See Sister Estelle Nordick,“St. Benedict’s Hospital.” See also scrapbooks available at Mount Benedict Archives.

22 Sister Nordick,“St. Benedict’s Hospital,” 20.

23 Sister Elizabeth Slaughter interview by Elienne Flaherty April 13, 1989; Sister Keith Eickhoff, recorded statement July 6,1996, St. Benedict’s Convent Archives, St. Joseph, Minnesota.

24 “A Benedictine Apostolate Among the Mormons,” transcript, 10.

25 Sister Estelle Nordick,“St Benedict’s Hospital,” 11.

26 The new hospital at 3900 Harrison Boulevard did not open until 1966. “McKay-Dee Hospital History,” chapter 3.

27 Helen H. Farr, “Thomas D. Dee Memorial Hospital School of Nursing Alumni Association Roster, 1913-19-55,” MS 41, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University.

28 Sister Estelle Nordick,“St. Benedict’s Hospital,” 259.

29 See: “A Benedictine Apostolate Among the Mormons,” transcript. Sister Estelle Nordick, interview by Robert Giacovelli, 1980. This suggested practice was one of several misunderstandings. Sealings or marriages to living people other than to spouses are not a Mormon practice.

30 Colleen Whitley email to Kent Powell, August 20, 2008, in possession of author.

31 Sister Anne Malerich interview by Kathryn Burnside, September 27, 2003; Sister Rebecca Schmidt, interview by Kathryn L. MacKay, September 27, 2003; Sister Giovanni Bienick, interview by Kathryn Burnside, September 17, 2003, Mount Benedict Archives.

32 For a study of Catholic health care and abortion see Kathleen M. Joyce, “The Evil of Abortion and the Greater Good of Faith: Negotiating Catholic Survival in the Twentieth-Century American Health Care System,” Religion and American Culture:A Journal of Interpretation, 12 (Spring 2002) 91-92.

33 In 1959 Bishop Federal had approached the sisters about taking over operations of a hospital in Price, Utah, where the church had a large parish, Notre Dame de Lourdes. The sisters were enthusiastic about the project. However, the Carbon Country commissioners took control of the hospital. See Estelle Nordick,“St. Benedict’s Hospital,” 27-28, and Sister Benora Gaida, interview by Robert Giacovelli, 1980.

34 Sister Arles Silbernick, interviewed by Kathryn L. MacKay, September 20, 2003, Mount Benedict Archives.

35 Richfield Reaper, January 3, 1963, quoted in Evin Rademacher, O.S.B., Emmanuel Renner, O.S. B., Olivia Forster, O.S. B., and Carol Berg, With Hearts Expanded, Transformations in the Lives of Benedictine Women, St. Joseph Minnesota, 1957 to 2000 (St. Cloud, MN: North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc., 2000), 252.

36 John J. Fialka, Sisters, Catholic Nuns and the Making of America, (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2003), 3. The Catholic Health Association reported in January 2008 that Catholic facilities still count for more than one-fifth of all hospital admissions in the United States, even though there are no longer any Catholic hospitals in the western states of Hawaii, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.“Catholic Health Care in the United States,“ CHA, January 2008, http://www.chausa.org, (Accessed July 5, 2008).

37 The sixteen sisters who signed the document were: Sisters Arles Silbernick, Jacquelyn Dubay, Jeanette Klassen, Keith Eickhoff, Martina Schindler, and Norita Lanners all of whom eventually returned to Minnesota. Sisters Marjane Martens and Maxine Kaiser left the order. Sisters Francis Forster, Danile Knight, Jean Gibson, Judine Suter, Luke Hoschette, Mary Zenzen, Stephanie Mongeon, and Virgene Marx remained in Utah. Sisters of St. Benedict’s Convent Missioned in Utah, “Dependent Priory Planning Study,” January 1980, Mount Benedict Archives.

38 With the emergence of for-profit health-care corporations in the 1970s, the health care environment has become increasingly regulated and competitive, forcing many hospital closures and mergers. For example, the number of Catholic hospitals decreased from 640 in 1990 to 601 in 1999. Kenneth R. White, “Hospitals Sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church: Separate, Equal, and Distinct?” The Milbank Quarterly, 78 (Spring 2000): 213-239; JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3350451.

39 Sister Luke Hoschette, “Monastery Tales, Mount Benedict Priory, Ogden, Utah,” The American Monastic Newsletter 25 (February 1995): 10.The eleven sisters included Sister Iris Beckwith who worked as a nurse in the hospital; she had joined the community in 1986. Sister Francis Forster was retired. Sister Jean Gibson who had earned a degree from the hospital x-ray school and a Ph.D. in physics was in the x- ray department. Sister Luke Hoschette with an MBA from Notre Dame University was the hospital administrator in the 1960s and returned from Minnesota to work in hospital administration. Sister Jeremia Januschka had worked as a teacher and then as a trainer for deacons in the dioceses. Sister Danile Knight worked in the hospital pharmacy and in 1988 was appointed director of the Lady of the Mountains Retreat Center, located near St Joseph High School. Sister Marilyn Mark was trained in music and worked in various capacities in the diocese. Sister Virgene Marx worked in pastoral care in the hospital. Sister Stephanie Mongeon had worked as a dietician in the hospital but had moved into administration. Sister Judine Suter worked for the hospital ACT program, and Sister Mary Zenzen was a pediatric nurse.

40 Sister Stephanie Mongeon interview by Kathryn MacKay, October 10, 2004. Sister Judine Suter interview by Kathryn L. MacKay, November 9, 2004. Mount Benedict Archives.

41 The sisters had built their first convent in 1965 on the campus of the old St. Benedict’s Hospital. In 1976, the sisters moved into two residences built near the site of the new St. Benedict’s Hospital. Between 1989 and 1991 six sisters returned to Minnesota, so the sisters offered one of the residences to the hospital. The apartment was renamed Christopher Inn and it became a guest house for families of patients.

42 Catholic sisters who worked in education and other activities usually received only a stipend and no retirement for that work. However, sisters who worked in health care earned compensatory salaries and benefits. Sister Luke Horschette, interview notes by Kathryn L. MacKay, July 7, 2008.

43 See: St. Benedict Foundation,” Mission Statement,” http://www.mbmutah.org/StBenedicts- Foundation.htm (Accessed July 9, 2008).

44 Sister Luke Herschette, “The Changing Monastic Landscape, Mount Benedict Monastary,” The American Monastic Newsletter 30 (February 2001) 3.