Sister M. Ermenilda Stegeman was born at Leoville, Kansas on July 26, 1916, to Cecilia Mumm from Galena, Illinois and John Stegeman, from Iowa. She was baptized Helena Ann. Helena Ann was the fifth child and the youngest of four daughters. Her brother whom she never knew died three days after his birth. Her three older sisters became members of the Sisters of St. Joseph, entering Nazareth Motherhouse in Concordia, Kansas, and receiving the names: Sister Louis Marie, Sister Rose Cecilia, Sister Julia.

At age fifteen, Helena Ann told her parents she would like to be a Benedictine Sister at Clyde, Missouri. Her mother found it difficult to accept this aspiration, and questioned: Why Clyde? Couldn’t she go to Concordia with her sisters? But Helena felt an attraction for a different type of community and lifestyle. Perhaps she had come to know about Clyde through her pastor and confessor, Father Wolff.

On her sixteenth birthday, the feast of St. Bernard, August 20, 1932, found Helena Ann presenting herself at the door of the Benedictine Convent of Perpetual Adoration at Clyde. At the time she thought she would never again return to Kansas to visit her mother. But in the loving Providence of God, and as a result of changes in the rules after Vatican Council II, Sister Mary Ermenilda did return several times before her mother’s death, while she was residing at St. Ann's Home for the Aged.

Helena Ann spent one year in the postulancy, and received the Benedictine habit on August 26, 1933. The year in the novitiate, under the guidance of Sister M. Carmelita Quinn, passed swiftly and on October 27,1934, she professed first vows as a Benedictine Sister of Perpetual Adoration. She received the name Ermenilda, after a Benedictine Abbess. Perpetual vows were pronounced on January 27, 1940, together with Sister M. Lucina Thompson, Sister M. Constantia Sullivan, and Sr. Maria Teresita Parra.

The special privilege of Consecration as a Virgin was hers in the first ceremony held at Clyde, November 16, 1952. Sr. M. Ermenilda’s forty-eight years as a religious were spent at Clyde, Kansas City and Mundelein in a variety of assignments. She used to say that in her first nine years in the convent she had as many different kinds of work as there were years: on the farm, helping care for chickens, gathering eggs; in the bakery; kitchen; altar bread production and distribution; in the printery; and creditor in the correspondence department; packer, in charge of the outgoing mail. In later years when she took care of the mailing at Clyde, she would sometimes walk to the post office to seek information from the postmaster on postal regulations.

Sister M. Ermenilda was very generous and tenderhearted, and would volunteer to remain with the sick when they needed constant attention, or she would stay up at night with the dying. She had a partial assignment of night duty for several years. She used to collect stamps to send to her religious sister, who used them for the missions. 

Always faithful to day and night adoring, Sister. M. Ermenilda was strongly attracted to the Charismatic Prayer and Healing movement. She participated in Charismatic Conventions in Kansas City and St. Louis, and made retreats together with her blood sisters. She attended prayer meetings and found them enriching for her spiritual life.  She spent some years in Kansas City, being transferred there in April 1955, and was in Mundelein from August 5, 1963 to April 19, 1968, but most of her life was spent at Clyde.

Sister M. Ermenilda suffered some from arthritis, but the last three months of her life, September, October, November, were a triduum of pain-filled days, when she battled with cancer. 

On Friday morning, November 19, 1982, the doctor told her a CT scan revealed cancer in both lungs. Sister remarked, "It won't be long now," and in less than two hours her soul sped away to her Creator. 

The funeral, on November 22, was celebrated by Father Reginald Sanders, OSB., of Conception Abbey. Father Reginald had grown up near the Stegeman family in Kansas. He mentioned in the sermon that Sister Rose Cecilia tells the story how Sister M. Ermenilda had held him in her arms as a baby, and from that time on began to pray consistently that he might become a priest.

May she now rejoice forever with the saints in heaven, "reborn in the saving Lord."