Frieda Adeline Sobba, the oldest of six children and only daughter of Christopher Sobba and Ruth Ralston, was born August 11, 1916, at Pratt, Kansas and was baptized four days later on the Feast of the Assumption.

When she was one year old, the family moved to western Kansas to a farm in Meade County. She attended the parochial grade school in Fowler, Kansas and was taught by the Dominican nuns from Great Bend, Kansas. After graduating from the public high school, she stayed home until January 1936 and then went to Business College in Wichita, Kansas, for four months. She then started working at the Farm Bureau Office on the Farm Program in Meade, Kansas and worked there for six years, until 1942.

Her oldest brother, John, went to Tucson for his health and Frieda went with him. She worked for a construction company and later was a bookkeeper and accountant for a wholesale plumbing and heating company. During World War II, she did USO work with a Catholic girls group she had joined while in Tucson.

A friend of Frieda’s back in Kansas was a cousin to our Sr. M. Gabriel and asked her to stop and see her sometime. This was how she became acquainted with our congregation. She became an Oblate of our Tucson monastery in 1947 and helped in the library that the Oblates and Sentinels had. She had a home just 4 blocks from the convent. She did volunteer work there until she moved away from Tucson.

She returned home to Kansas to take care of her aging father in 1957. Two years later her father died and she started making inquiries about entering the convent. “I was past the usual age of entrance and did not know if I would be accepted. I was an Oblate of St. Benedict, being affiliated with Conception Abbey, and wanted to continue being a Benedictine and also wanted the Divine Office. I knew I didn’t want to teach and I wanted a life of prayer. Sr. M. Carmelita accepted my application and I entered at the age of 44 on the Feast of St. Agnes, January 21, 1961.

She said one of her favorite memories was the first the Christmas Vespers she experienced as a postulant because the lessons were so beautiful. Frieda was invested on September 12, 1961 and made First Profession on September 12, 1963, receiving the name of Sr. Mary Mildred.

As a novice and a junior sister her work assignments were in the veil room, main kitchen and Infirmary kitchen. She transferred to St. Louis in April of 1968. For the six months before her Final Profession, she worked in the sewing room. She made Perpetual vows on September 12, 1968.

She was then transferred to Tucson for 2 1/2 years to do the bookkeeping. In March of 1971, she moved to Clyde to be sub-prioress for Sr. M. Benita Luetkemeyer. In 1974 she was assigned to St. Louis to be the local bookkeeper and also take care of the Mass intentions for the house and Congregation. She would also work many years in the correspondence department at St. Louis before moving to the infirmary. Some of her many hobbies over the years were reading, doing embroidery work, playing cards and playing pool.

Sr. Mildred died at the age of 92 early Easter Sunday morning on April 12, 2009 at 12:32 AM. Sr. Virginia Anne had been keeping vigil with her and had just stepped out of the room for a moment when Sr. Mildred was called home. The Mass of Christian Burial was held on April 16.