- Date Of Birth: 1926
- Date Of Death: 2019
- State: Minnesota
Obituary of Sr. Mary Kessler, CSJ
Sr. Mary Kessler, CSJ
Age 93, died May 14, 2019
Little did Mary Kessler realize as she taught and enjoyed fourth graders, then sixth, then high school students that the children and teenagers in her classrooms were teaching her how human beings grow and develop and readying her for the counseling work she seemed born to do. She taught at Blessed Sacrament, St. Thomas the Apostle, St. Mary’s High School in Waverly, then became Assistant Principal at the Academy of Holy Angels for six years with Sister Constance Marie, and at St. Margaret’s Academy.
The third of three daughters born to Mary McConnon and Carl Kessler, Mary grew up playing the cello with her sisters Helen, piano, and Catherine, violin. Born April 16, 1926, she graduated from St. Joseph Academy in 1944 and joined the sisters in 1947 before her senior year at the College of St. Catherine. She completed her BA in 1950, earned an MA in English at Notre Dame in 1959, and counseling certification at the University of Minnesota in 1964. She celebrated her 70th jubilee as a sister last year and died peacefully May 14, 2019.
Though not a professional musician like her sisters, Mary always held her own in a chord and integrated her love of song and harmony into a ministry of community building, first as a counselor and then province personnel director (1965-1975). In 1975, Mary established and for 20 years directed Derham Community, a personal development house for sisters. “I have never met anyone who did not experience a re-awakened hope and a newly-invigorated, whole self, given the time and freedom to claim herself in the midst of community living. We have within us and within one another the power to heal,” Mary affirmed at the 10th anniversary. Derham Community claims nearly 300 alumnae.
In her office Mary kept a poster-sized quotation from W. S. Merwin’s poem “The Lark:” Where and at what height can it begin, I the shadow singing I the light?
Mary is preceded in death by her parents and sisters Helen and Catherine. She is survived by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and Consociates.
