Sister M. Camilla Chadwick, MM

Born: July 6, 1883
Entered: July 2, 1936
Died: December 28, 1943

You are all waiting patiently for word on Sister Camilla’s illness and death, December 28, 1943. As Mildred L. Chadwick she entered July 2, 1936, and was professed January 6, 1939. She was missioned to Japan, repatriated, and in 1943.

Sister seemed quite as well as the others when she returned. She was outstandingly happy to be at the Motherhouse and noted every smallest change and improvement in it. Anxious as she was to be with her own beloved family, she had a curious sense of wishing to remain here and visit her family later. (She had seen them for a few hours as they had come on to New York to meet her.) However we deemed it best for all our repatriates to go home at once, to satisfy the longing of their families to have them and so that after the visit each could get whatever medical care and rest would be necessary.

So Sister Camilla started for home with her father, mother and sisters. To get to Concord, New Hampshire, Sister’s home, one must go via Boston. When they were near Providence, Sister Camilla became very ill.She rallied from it, but was very weak, so that when they reached Boston, her sister Dorothy, a nurse, took Sister directly to the Carney Hospital, where Sister had trained.

About a week later she again fell ill.  She seemed to get better, though she was weak. At the end of her vacation, which we had extended, Dorothy brought her here. Then she became very ill. So we took her to the hospital. Sister Josephine, to whom she was greatly attached, took care of her. She died on the feast of the Holy Innocents – a fitting day for her child-like soul to wing its way to God.

Father Daly had attended her in one of her lucid periods. Even in her wanderings her thoughts were lofty and deeply spiritual and revealed some of her soul’s loveliness.

Everything went off with the dignity and beauty we like to have mark all liturgical functions. Office of the Dead, the Mass and Burial were all quite perfectly carried out. The weather was all that could be desired, clear and cold, with brilliant sunshine.