Maryknoll Sister Blanche M. Thiel, a chaplain, pastoral worker and dietary researcher who served 20 years in Hawaii, died Aug. 29 at a Maryknoll Sisters care home in Ossining, N.Y. She was 87 and a religious sister for 64 years.
Sister Blanche came to Hawaii in 1971, serving first as a dietician and cook at St. Anthony Convent on Maui, then as receptionist and later as a pastoral care worker at St. Francis Hospital in Honolulu from 1973 to 1979.
In 1979, she became director and chaplain of Catholic patients at Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, working there until her retirement in 1992.
“In my work as a hospital pastoral associate,” she reflected in 1981, “every day I see what it means to be a Christian; when I meet a new patient and they cry [because] I came to pray with them. … They are so happy. … Many attribute their becoming better to our visits and prayers.”
Born on Oct. 10, 1925, in Milwaukee, Sister Blanche joined Maryknoll in Valley Park, Mo., on Oct. 14, 1948. Before entering the convent, she was a nurse’s aide at St. Luke’s Hospital and a toll operator for the Wisconsin Telephone Company, both in Milwaukee.
Sister Blanche’s religious name was Matthias Marie. She made her first profession on May 8, 1951, in Valley Park, and her final vows on May 8, 1954, at the motherhouse in Ossining, N.Y.
Sister Blanche first served Maryknoll as a receptionist, operating the sisters’ switchboard, 1951-1958. She then worked for two years as a staff dietician at Queen of the World Hospital, Kansas City, Mo., the nation’s first interracial hospital. In 1960, she became the supervisor of the sisters’ kitchen in Topsfield, Mass., serving until 1965.
Sister Blanche spent the next three years as a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health before joining a team of researchers at Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, in 1968. There she worked on a nationwide research program on the nutrition of preschool children, first as a researcher and in 1969 as the program’s supervisor.
From 1970 to 1971, she worked as dietician supervisor for a New York residence for physically and mentally disabled persons. From there she was appointed to the congregation’s central Pacific region and to Maui and Oahu until her retirement.
After Hawaii, Sister Blanche lived at the Maryknoll Sisters’ residence in Monrovia, Calif., before returning to the Maryknoll Sisters Center in Ossining in 2005.
Sister Blanche’s funeral was Sept. 4 in the Annunciation Chapel at the Maryknoll Sisters Center. She is buried in the Maryknoll Sisters Cemetery at Maryknoll, N.Y.
