I found an old picture with Kate Ogilve White in it. She was a bridesmaid in a wedding in 1974. I cropped the picture so that only Kate could be seen (left). She was a lovely person, very gentle and kind, even then.
Twenty years later, she worked for a brief time at DeLaSalle as a secretary. She was soft-spoken and pleasant to everyone.
Kate just died this October. Her funeral was lovely, as only a funeral for a gentle person could be. She never married. She was in her seventies when she died, having suffered from an illness for several years.
I received a call this week from an investment company who informed me that Kate had remembered us in her will.
I was very surprised and touched.
Kate had come from a family who had been well-off at one time, but she lived simply and frugally. She had gone to school in France as a teenager, learned to speak French fluently, and then, for a brief time, worked alongside Dorothy Day in the soup kitchen at the Catholic Worker House in New York City.
When I first met her in 1973, she was working at Rockhurst College as a secretary.
She was unique and wonderful and full of surprises, even after her death with her nice remembrance last week for the DeLaSalle Education Center.
I was privileged to know her.
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