In March 2006 Sister Ruth Gehres, an Ursuline Sister of Mount Saint Joseph, spent five weeks at the Dianna Ortiz Ursuline Center for Women in Chillán, Chile, South America. Known affectionately as Casa Ursulina (Ursuline House in Spanish), the center was founded and is directed by fellow Ursuline Sister Mary Elizabeth (Mimi) Ballard. For Sister Ruth, associate director of communications for the Ursuline Sisters, this trip was a working vacation. “I was writing a story about Casa Ursulina for our Ursulines Alive magazine, and I wanted to get to know the women personally,” she explains. “It also helped me with my Spanish. And I just needed some time off.”

    Originally it may have been an innocent working vacation for Sister Ruth, but it turned into a major event in her life – one that has led to a late-life career change that is taking her 5,000 miles from Owensboro to her newest ministry with Casa Ursulina.
     “When I got there last March, I found the spirit of Casa Ursulina so energizing,” says Sister Ruth. “The women are strong, determined, creative. Even though they are financially poor, they are rich in many other ways. Their poverty doesn’t keep them from being happy.”
     After five weeks in Chillán, Sister Ruth wasn’t ready to leave. “I didn’t want to go, but I knew I had to,” she says. “The time went so fast, and I found out that I could manage with my rudimentary Spanish. The women were so encouraging! I found myself wishing I could stay, but I saw that as wishful thinking. I was too old (I thought), and I had too much responsibility here at the Mount.”
     Returning home, she pushed away the thought of returning to Casa Ursulina, and for three months put her head into her work. But her heart kept returning to Chillán. Finally, a very good friend asked her why she was pushing those thoughts back, and encouraged her to follow her heart. After talking to Sister Mimi, Sister Michele Morek (Ursuline congregational leader) and other friends and family members, she did just that. “Nobody thought I was too old or too crazy!” On October 22, Sister Ruth will begin her newest ministry, working with the women of Casa Ursulina in Chillán.
     Chillán, Chile, is a long way from Vanderburgh County, Indiana, where Janet Gehres (now Sister Ruth) was born to Fay Alvin Gehres, a radio engineer, and Floretta Snyder Gehres, who had been a teacher and a receptionist in a dentist’s office. She is the oldest of three siblings. Her sister Ruth Ann lives in Canton, North Carolina, brother Bob in rural Warrick County, Indiana.

    Janet entered the first grade at Scott Township School in northern Vanderburgh County. The country had just moved out of the Great Depression into World War II, and, in these years of fuel rationing, her father moved his family frequently to be closer to his work. Second and third grades were spent at Saint Boniface School on Evansville’s west side, where Sister Ruth was taught for the first time by Ursuline Sisters – Ursuline Sisters from Louisville. “We still lived out in the country,” she recalls, “and I rode the Reitz High School bus to school every day.”
     When the family moved to Evansville’s east side, Sister Ruth spent fourth through eighth grade at Saint Benedict School, taught by the Benedictine Sisters from Ferdinand. Many years later Sister Ruth would again cross paths with the Benedictines from Dubois County.
     Next stop was Mount Saint Joseph Academy at Maple Mount, but not by choice. “My mother and dad made the sacrifice to send me to the academy, because they thought it would be good for me,” she explained. “My mother had visited several schools. But she came back from the Mount in ecstasy about the Ursulines and told me this was where I was going to go whether I wanted to or not. At that point I knew I was doomed!” She continued, “Now I see why all of this happened. God was working in my life, and He wanted me to be an Ursuline.”
     It didn’t take long for the freshman to settle into her new home. “Within two weeks I was very happy,” she recalls. “Because I was again in a rural setting – I was still a country kid at heart. The sisters were wonderful – strict, but wonderful. I really learned how to study and became a serious student.”
     Since she started piano lessons quite early, music had always been a part of Sister Ruth’s life. In elementary school, she played the piano and sang in the choir. She continued with her keyboard and choral work at the academy and began playing clarinet in the small school orchestra.

     Sister Ruth says she was blessed to have had a really good Catholic education, but she is convinced that she got her teaching vocation in the first grade at Scott Township Public School. “I had a wonderful first grade teacher,” she recalls. “My mother had already prepared me for school, but I loved first grade because of my teacher, Miss Martha Bower. She was what you might call an ‘old maid’ school teacher – in the best sense. She loved her pupils and we loved her. She inspired us to learn.”
     Many years later, when Sister Ruth was preparing to enter the convent, she went back to see Miss Martha and told her she was going to become a teacher. During this visit, Miss Martha pulled out a poem about rain that Janet had written in the first grade. Sister Ruth didn’t remember writing that poem, but she will never forget the teacher who held onto it for so many years, the teacher who inspired her teaching vocation that would later develop into her Ursuline vocation.
     Sister Ruth received her teaching vocation early, but only when she came to the Mount did she realize that she was being called to a religious life. “At Christmas I went home and told Mom I was going to enter the convent.” And she did – following her graduation almost four years later. During her first (postulant) year, she began studying at Brescia College. Two years later, as a second-year novice, she was asked to substitute teach fifth-grade classes for three days at Saint Alphonsus Grade School. The novice teacher was thrilled. “My great desire to be a teacher was confirmed.”
     After making her temporary vows, Sister Ruth finally had her own classroom. Her first assignment took her all the way to a two-room school in Paul, Nebraska, eight miles from Nebraska City. “I had ‘the little room’ – 25 children from kindergarten to fourth grade,” Sister Ruth recalls. “And I loved it, it was wonderful. I taught all subjects plus choir and piano and still found time to take some piano lessons myself. The school was across from Saint Joseph church, a big, beautiful, German church known as “the cathedral in the wilderness.’” 

    Three years later she moved to another two-room school – Our Lady of Mercy at Hodgenville, Kentucky – where she served one year as principal and teacher with about 15 children in the upper grades (5-8).
     The next year Sister Ruth returned to Owensboro to teach and to complete work for her Brescia degree. For four years she and Sister Joseph Angela taught school at Saints Joseph and Paul School and went to Brescia “every afternoon, evening, weekend, and summer, and got our degrees.”
     These degrees didn’t come easy. Sister Ruth remembers, “It was very strenuous. We didn’t have time to study. We studied under the covers at night with a flashlight. We supported each other. I don’t think I would have gotten through that without Joseph Angela. She’s a person of great wit. We found lots of things to laugh about, and we survived.”
     In summer 1962, with her degree in English completed, Sister Ruth was headed to teach at St. Joseph High School, Mayfield. But a call from Mother Mary Wilfrid Hayden informed her of a change of plans – she was to go to St. Louis University to earn her doctorate in English and a minor in German. Brescia College president Sister Joan Marie Lechner, Sister Ruth’s mentor and close friend, had recommended that she do so.
     After five years of study in the Gateway City, Sister Ruth returned to Owensboro and started teaching at Brescia College, even though she hadn’t yet received her doctoral degree. “I was working on my dissertation and teaching at the same time,” she explained, teaching English and, for a while, some German.

     Ruth Bittel of Owensboro was one of her Brescia students. “Her classes were always interesting and enjoyable,” she says of her former teacher. “I remember her always encouraging us to achieve and go beyond ourselves. And since I was a student teacher at the time, I really appreciated that. She always supported us.” Over the years Ruth Bittel, now Ruth Bittel Nuñez, and Sister Ruth have become close personal friends. “She is a good listener,” the former student says. “She’s always kept in touch, has been very supportive and has always found time for a friend whether she was the president of Brescia or a teacher in the classroom. We shared our love of travel through letters, postcards and visits. We also shared our love of good literature and now our love of the good Hispanic people.” Bittel Nuñez is a member of the staff at Centro Latino, a center for local Hispanics founded by Ursuline Sister Fran Wilhelm.

    Sister Ruth’s early years at Brescia were during the Vietnam War, and the school was filled with students and short on faculty.  Things happened quickly for Sister Ruth. She soon became chair of the English department and then of the Humanities division. For a couple of years she was alumni director (“That was a fun job. I really liked it!”). She worked in publications and was involved, for a time, in the writing of the new constitution for the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph following Vatican II.
     In 1975 Sister Ruth was one of five Ursuline sisters chosen for a Friendship Force exchange to Cremona, Italy. Approximately 200 people from Owensboro traveled from Evansville to Cremona, Italy, and 200 people from Cremona were brought back to Owensboro for two weeks. For Sister Ruth, it was quite an experience. “My first grade teacher changed my whole life,” she says. “Mount Saint Joseph Academy changed my whole life. And the Friendship Force experience changed my whole life.”
     She continued, “I found out that Europe wasn’t just a place in a book or on a map. It really existed!” After spending a week in Cremona, she managed a number of side trips throughout the area, including visits to Desenzano, birthplace of Saint Angela Merici, and Brescia, where Saint Angela lived and ministered most of her life.
     “The Friendship Force trip was a great adventure,” says Sister Ruth. “It opened my eyes to the wonders of Europe. After that I started thinking about Germany. It took me about five years to get there.”
     In 1984-85 she returned to Europe to teach English and work in the library for the Ursuline Sisters of Straubing, Germany, the community that founded the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville, who later established the Academy at Mount Saint Joseph. She lived with the sisters, speaking mostly German. 

     Back at Brescia in fall 1985, Sister Ruth was asked to substitute for college President Sister George Ann Cecil when she underwent surgery. She was named acting president when Sister George Ann died in December. In February 1986 she was elected president by the board of trustees, a position she held until September 1995. “These were strenuous years,” she remembers. “I was blessed by the strong support of the board of trustees, our bishop, the college faculty and staff, our students, and my Ursuline community.” She is especially proud of the Brescia Campus Center, “the fruit of years of hard work on the part of the Brescia community and the generosity of so many dedicated donors.”
     Following her retirement as Brescia president, Sister Ruth spent an eight-month sabbatical at Saint Meinrad in Spencer County, Indiana. Then she was hired by the Saint Meinrad College, teaching English, doing liturgy and some spiritual direction. “That was a wonderful time,” Sister Ruth fondly recalls. “I really loved Saint Meinrad. I loved the Benedictines. I loved the liturgy. It was a great two years.” During this time, she was living in Ferdinand and traveling regularly to Evansville to care for her father, who died in 1997.
     When the college closed after two years, Sister Ruth was looking for a job. She saw an ad in the weekly Ferdinand News. The Benedictine Sisters, just up the hill, were looking for an associate in communications. She got the job and spent two years in communications work for the Ferdinand Benedictines.
     “On my way to a third year at Ferdinand, learned that the new mission advancement office at Mount Saint Joseph was to have a communications component. “I knew that was what I’d been waiting for, what I really wanted to do. I needed to do it for my community. In September of 2000 I was named director of communications for the new mission advancement department.”

    In 2002, in order to concentrate on the creation of the new Ursulines Alive magazine of which she was the editor, Sister Ruth was named associate director of communications. She leaves that position at the end of July to begin preparations for her new ministry.
     Sister Michele praises Sister Ruth’s teaching, administrative and writing skills and predicts good, fun things will happen in Chile. “I’ve known Ruth since we were both fledging college teachers at Brescia (though I was less ‘fledged’ than she was in 1971),” she says. “I know from those days that she is an excellent teacher, with special strengths in teaching adults and students who need special help. Besides ‘shining’ as a faculty member, she also had a great deal of administrative experience as chair of the humanities division, as director of the college alumni association and as president of the college. And, of course, any reader of Ursulines Alive has benefited from her exceptional writing and verbal organizational skills.”
     Sister Michele looked ahead and predicted, “But it’s probably her linguistic ability that will really make her a star in her new work in Chile. She has studied several languages — French, Spanish, Italian, and German — and approaches the study of any language with real joy and great enthusiasm. Ruth is great fun, has a delightful whimsical sense of humor, loves people and new places, so I expect that she will love Chile and will be loved in turn. And I know she’ll have fun!”

     Sister Suzanne Sims, Sister Ruth’s supervisor the last seven years as director of mission advancement ministry, says, “Sister Ruth's study of languages (especially English!), her knowledge and experience of the software applications, and her extensive background in the Ursuline tradition and way of life, all have contributed to her excellence in our ministry together these last seven years. She is one of those Sisters in our community who has a clear and quick knowledge of the past, a keen understanding of the present members and partnerships of the Ursuline Sisters, and a vision for the mission of the community in the future. She will be living into that future as she immerses herself into the Spanish language and the culture of Chillán, Chile, this next year.”
     Sister Suzanne calls Sister Ruth one of those persons who simply “cannot be replaced.” She says, “When we discuss who might take Sister Ruth's role after she goes south, we know that she cannot be replaced. Her unique gifts and talents shared so generously these years will certainly be missed. She has promised to be our ‘electronic eyes’ if we need something proofread quickly!  We wish her many blessings on her new ministry at Casa Ursulina.”
     Longtime friend Ruth Bittel says she will also miss Sister Ruth, but plans to keep in touch regularly. “As she moves to Chile I will miss her so,” she says. “But we will keep in touch by email. Oh what a treasure trove of talent they are getting with Sister Ruth and Sister Mimi combined!”  
     What are Sister Ruth’s thoughts as she prepares to live among the poor in an area where families struggle daily with poverty and the problems that poverty brings?
     “Being an Ursuline has given me a wonderful life,” she says. “When I look back on my life and see how God has loved me through the people in my life I’ve already met, my education and my vocation as an Ursuline Sister, I am amazed at what a full life I’ve lived. I have been gifted with good health, good genes. I don’t think that when you get to be 65 or 70 or more, you stop learning, stop having exciting experiences or stop serving. Retirement to me sounds very boring. My mind is alive. I want to live fully until I die.”

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