Episode 4 - Kathleen O’Sullivan
Sister Kathleen O’Sullivan
Welcome to Mining City Reflections, where we illuminate the history of Butte, Montana through the stories and observations of 20th century women who lived there. I'm your host, Marian Jensen. The oral history collection in the Butte Archives has preserved the personal reminiscences of many of the city's women. In vivid detail they bring to life the challenges and achievements of the boom to bust town.
A defining influence among Butte’s heavily Catholic population came from those women who served in Holy Orders in the many parish schools. The Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth arrived in 1881, and the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary followed in 1907. Dedicated, courageous and hard-working, many of these women came from Butte's own Irish immigrant families.
“My father may have been in the IRA, but she was the rebel.”
That's the voice of Kathleen O'Sullivan, remembering her Irish immigrant parents. A Sister of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, O'Sullivan made a lasting mark on the community. Her oral history was taken by Lori Mercier in 1987 as part of the Montana Historical Society Project on Women as Community Builders. O'Sullivan grew up in San Francisco and came to Butte in 1950. Listen as she describes her eye-opening arrival to teach in one of the city’s many parish schools in 1950.
“Well, I was assigned to Butte. I taught in Chicago for a little over a year and then was assigned to Butte, which meant you came out by train. I was just so impressed by it all. In those times, you wore this veil and white thing around your head. And I remember standing out on the back on the little observation car of the Milwaukee once we got past Bozeman, and I saw all these mountains. And I just stood out there and got so excited. By the time I got to Butte, all the soot I think had come around and landed on all this white stuff [I was wearing], so I was a sight when I got off! And there were people to meet the train. I can remember the route we took down Montana Street, and we probably went over and got to Cobban and headed over out to St. Ann’s where I was going to teach. There was nothing past the old Quonset hut. It was all just prairie and sagebrush and you could walk straight across over to the railroad tracks. And so I settled into the life of teaching.”
Like many girls in the city's Catholic diocese, Kathleen's inspiration to join a religious community had come in high school and grew into a lifelong vocation.
“I had one teacher in high school that I just admired a great deal. I think that got me started thinking. I remember thinking, if I was a boy, I’d join the Navy, or I’d be a missionary, but it has been a good, happy life for me. I’ve grown and matured and the reasons I’m doing what I’m doing are better than they were when I started out.”
After four years teaching in Butte, Sister Kathleen was transferred to teach in Hawaii and California, but eventually when given the chance, she chose to return to the place she fell most at home.
“The schools had closed in Butte and I spent a summer at Carroll [College], sort of to look over the lay of the land and let people get to know me. I came up the next year and started work in the Religious Education Center, which used to be St. Joseph’s School and is now a school again. I did adult education and worked with religious education teachers, laypeople, on the junior high level, things like this. We often said if we did a good enough job, we’d work ourselves out of a job, which we did. We had a staff of priests and laypeople; there must have been 12 there when I came. By 1978-1979, we were down to two, just one priest and myself. So we did a good job, and there we were. I wasn’t ready to leave Butte; I’d made so many good friends and I just - there’s something about the mountains in this part of the country that are strengthening for me. So I said I’d like to stay.”
By the mid 60s, the enrollments in parish schools had risen six times faster than those taking holy orders. Filling the roster for teaching sisters became more difficult, and as a result, Catholic primary schools began to close. Emphasis shifted to providing Catholic education in the junior high and high school. In response, Sister Kathleen decided to pour her passions for peace and justice into support for the Butte Community Union, a non-profit that helped low income citizens most affected by the Anaconda Company mine closures in 1982.
“I happened to sit next to someone who was on the board at the BCU and I said, “I hope to soon give a little time to the BCU.” And then before I knew it, I was on the board! The good Sister. And I think the fact that I was a Sister, publicly, the title and all this - that was good for BCU and that was OK. Then my community said they had some money to support people so why don’t you apply for one of those grants. And I did and I got a half-time support grant for the past 3 years to do work with the BCU, so here I am.”
Helping Butte's poor and underrepresented became Sister Kathleen's calling. She worked tirelessly on behalf of people who needed heat and food.
“And I think that my life changed. I got involved in things that, theoretically, I knew should be done, but I didn’t have the courage I guess to step out and begin anything. And then becoming involved with the BCU, everything was in place and we had marvelous leadership from our director, one Bob McCarthy. And I thought, yeah this is what the Gospel is all about. It isn’t about being nice, pious, goody-two-shoes, smiling and doing nice things. It’s about changing unjust systems. There’s even a prayer that we use and I’ve used it so often. Pray to the Holy Spirit, fill our hearts so that we can renew the face of the earth.”
Sister Kathleen considered her work personally transformational. Through her efforts in Butte, she had come to understand the overwhelming struggles of the poor in contrast to her own life in Holy Orders.
“We always have our community to fall back on. I know I never have to worry about anything, you know, the basics. Because my community is there to rescue me, no matter what kind of situation, or to support me. And that’s not like being poor. We were supposed to live poorly, and I guess a lot of us do, but boy we’ve got a safety net, the likes of which nobody else has. You know? So in a sense, you’re really out of touch with how things are in the streets.”
While the Butte Community Union brought its work to a close in the late 90's, Sister Kathleen remained in the city and continued to fight injustice. As late as 2013, at age 83, she was writing editorials in support of sensible immigration reform. Sister Kathleen died in 2018, having lived and served 72 years as a Sister of Charity.
“Jesus identified himself with the poor, and that’s where it’s at. That’s where real life is.”