On August 29, 1931, the hottest day of the year in tiny Dahlgren Township in southern Illinois, Helen Marie Kaufman joined her brother Henry, becoming the second child of Charles Albert Kaufman and Gertrude Rose Birkner Kaufman. One week later, she was baptized at Saint John the Baptist Church in Piopolis, Illinois. Just eighteen months later, the third child – Charles – was born, and little Helen Marie became a big sister. Only six months after that, she lost her dad to an illness and the family went to live with the Birkners, her maternal grandparents. But Helen Marie’s world would soon change again.
When Helen Marie was four years old, her mother married Joseph Kreher, a widower with eight children. Sister Catherine would remember, “by this marriage . . . I acquired three stepbrothers and five stepsisters. Two half-brothers – Gene and Paul – and four half sisters – Betty, Lucille, Dorothy, and Rosanna – were born of this union.”
At home, Helen Marie was busy helping with the cooking, cleaning, gardening, and caring for the younger children. She recalled, “when I graduated from 8th grade, Mom told me it was not important for a girl to go on to high school. My older brother hadn’t gone either.” So, Helen Marie remained at home on the farm. She later moved to St. Louis to work as a cook and housekeeper, until in 1953 while riding on a Greyhound bus, she heard a “call loud and clear to spend my life doing something more worthwhile than I had been doing so far.” She entered the Franciscan Hospital Sisters of Saint Francis at Springfield, Illinois, in September 1953, but left in 1955. She moved to Belleville, Illinois, and began working in the laundry of a hospital. Two priests suggested she get in touch with the Ursuline Sisters of Belleville, the American center for the Calvarienburg-Ahrweiler Congregation of Ursulines. Just two weeks later, on August 18, 1956, she joined the Ursuline Sisters. On August 22, 1957, Helen Marie was invested, becoming Sister Catherine Kaufman.
A gifted cook, she served for 45 years as director of food service at the Ursuline Motherhouse in Belleville, where she was also noted for beautiful needlework. Her specialty was bread, and she also baked and decorated Easter lamb cakes, was an expert at canning and preserving, and could secure fresh fruits and vegetables from area orchards and gardens. And during her time in Belleville, she earned her GED.
When the Ursulines of Belleville merged with Mount Saint Joseph on November 25, 2005 — Sister Catherine’s feast day — she moved to Maple Mount and continued her beautiful quilting, decorating and caring for plants.
She died July 29, 2024, and is buried in the Motherhouse cemetery.