On Sunday, August 21, 1921, Frances Vivian Mudd was the second daughter born to Xavier Eugene and Pearl Gertrude Mudd in Fredericktown, Ky. Almost three weeks later on Thursday, September 9, she received her full name – Mary Frances Vivian Mudd – at her baptism at Holy Trinity Church. She would be known as Vivian. When she turned 7, Vivian was introduced to the Ursulines as she began her education in the Washington County Public Schools in September 1928. She was taught by Ursuline Sisters throughout her public school years – growing in faith and her own expression of the Ursuline charisms. In 1940, Vivian would leave her family to begin another life at Maple Mount, a place she had never been before. She would say later, “it was not easy to leave my family, they (her siblings) were very young.”
Sister Jean Gertrude would profess first vows on August 15, 1943, and supported by her novitiate experience and classes at Mount Saint Joseph Junior College for Women, she would begin her first mission with the third grade at Saint James School in Louisville, Ky. For the next 30 years, Sister Jean Gertrude would teach the lower grades in Kentucky, Missouri and Nebraska schools. In Kentucky, these would include Saint James, Louisville; Saint Bernard, Clementsville; Saint Catherine, New Haven; and Saints Joseph and Paul in Owensboro. She taught six years at Saint Teresa in Glennonville, Mo., and in Nebraska for four years at Saint Benedict in Nebraska City, and at Saint Joseph in Paul. With time out for a three-year stint working in health care at Mount Saint Joseph, Sister Jean Gertrude would spend 20 years teaching remedial reading (plus some math) to children at Saint Angela’s in Louisville.
Later in life when she was asked if she would want any kind of training to strengthen her gifts, she most modestly replied, “I’d like some sewing classes.” Sister Jean Gertrude was also the master at the welcoming smile and a model of Ursuline hospitality – making all newcomers feel immediately at home, helping with the complicated stitchery involved in those unfamiliar habits, and just being simply welcoming.
At last, in 2006, Sister Jean Gertrude “retired” to Mount Saint Joseph to continue quilting and anything else where she was needed. Before long, she would move to the Villa to continue sharing her welcoming hospitality and to, once again, “give a great deal of thought” to what God was asking of her. Sister Jean Richard passed away on October 13, 2013, at Saint Joseph Villa and rests in the Mount Saint Joseph Cemetery.