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She later recalled “the desire of her heart to become a sister did not disappear” as she got older. As she grew up in Halstead, her childhood affinity with the deaconess and nuns did not diminish. At the age of 8, Frieda with her family migrated to the U.S. They had a profound impact on young Frieda.
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She was the first Mennonite woman to receive an honorary degree from a Mennonite institution of higher learning.īorn in Germany many of her early teachers were Lutheran Deaconesses and Catholic nuns. On May 27, 1942, Sister Frieda Kaufman received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Bethel College for her lifelong work as a deaconess and ‘sister-in-charge’ of the Bethel Deaconess Home and Hospital in Newton, Ks. But you came and stood beside me and held me by the hand and it made me feel so much better.” That was the phrase that always was reiterated, “You held me by the hand and I felt so much better.” daughter Marian Axtell Hanna I was so sick and doctor thought that I would surely not live. people would come up to her and say, “Oh, Dr. Her daughter Marian Axtell Hanna later recalled: John Axtell, opened Axtell Christian Hospital in 1887. Following her graduation, she resumed management of the hospital and also set up a private practice. Anna Perkins, also from Newton was the other. Lucena was one of two women to graduate from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in in Kansas City in 1897.