Joan Catherine Perridge was born in Brooklyn, New York, July 25, 1927, the third oldest in a family of seven children born to William James Perridge and Anna Carlton Perridge. Her parents told her that she had double pneumonia when she was 15 months old. When the doctor left one evening, he told them that she would not last through the night. Her parents bathed her in alcohol every hour that night. When the doctor returned the next day he was surprised to see she was alive.

She was attracted to the Blessed Sacrament at the age of nine when her older sister took her to Benediction. When she had finished grade school one of her teachers, a Sister of Mercy, told Joan Catherine that she thought she had a religious vocation. In her youth she always loved to sing, to knit, to play ball with her family, and in high school she played basketball. The thought of a religious vocation was never forgotten, but after finishing High School she stayed at home to help the family. Her mother was ill, her older sister was dying and the youngest child was about two years old.

After a year she went to business school, then worked as a secretary to the president of an advertising firm. She enjoyed her work on Madison Avenue in New York City. Then the vocation thought came up again. “I thought that I had let the Lord wait so long that I would make it up and go “all the way” with the Carmelites.” She entered at the age of 23 but after one year with the Carmelites she was too ill to remain and had to return home, not having the strength for that strict life. Two of her cousins were social work supervisors with the Sisters of Mercy, and Joan Catherine worked with them for two years before deciding to try religious life once more and look for a community that was not as rigorous as the Carmelites.

She talked to Father Andrew Ansbro who had conducted a retreat at her school. He told her that he knew Sr. M. Corona at Clyde, Missouri and encouraged her to go for a visit to the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. She came to visit and knew that this community would be just right for her, saying that the balance of prayer and work was an attraction for her.

She entered on April 23rd, 1955. 7 was a city girl but loved the farming area at Clyde from the beginning.” She made first profession on March 13, 1958 receiving the name Sr. Mary Kathleen. She returned to her baptismal name Joan Catherine in 1978. Final Profession was made on March 21, 1963.

Over her fifty-seven years in the congregation, Sr. Joan Catherine lived at the monasteries in Clyde, Kansas City, San Diego and St. Louis. Her work areas included the Correspondence Dept, where she took care of mailing, filing, crediting and letter writing; the laundry, a bit of gardening, bookkeeper in two houses, Altar Bread Dept., kitchen and bakery, and portress in all four monasteries where she had lived.

One of the high points of her life was a trip she took in 1977 with her father when she was 50 years old. They traveled to Greece, Cairo, Jordan, the Holy Land and Rome. The high point for her was going to Jerusalem. She wrote, “The Holy Land breathes a presence of the Lord even today amidst the commercialism, ruins, poverty, disputes, rivalries and contradictions. His presence seems to transcend the confusion and difficulties which exist and are probably not unlike those of the time of Christ. ”

Sister moved to Our Lady of Rickenbach Health Care facility in 2001 at Clyde. In her declining years she radiated a quiet joy. She started to noticeably decline the week of August 5th. She ‘slipped away’ quietly at 4am on August 14. A nurse had just been in her room, left briefly, and when she returned Sr. Joan Catherine had died. She was 85 years old and in the 54th year of her monastic profession. Three sisters and one brother survive her. The funeral was held on August 17th and she was buried in Mt. Calvary cemetery at Clyde.