Sister John Stahl

Sr John Stahl with Queen Elizabeth II in Botswana

Sister John combined being a Novice Mistress with a missionary career, with a significant difference! Her 30 year stint as Novice Mistress began in 1939. She was evacuated with the Ilford school to Devizes when she learned of her appointment. The novitiate too, along with Westgate boarding school was evacuated to tranquil Wallingford- on-Thames and remained there throughout the war. The buildings at Westgate being commandeered by the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). At the end of the war Novices and students returned to Westgate only to find that neither school nor novitiate under WAAF hands were quite as they had left them! 

There are no sisters alive today who can remember a novitiate before 1939.  During her thirty year span Sr John Stahl met many changes from Latin to English in the Mass, walled convents to suburban houses. It was her design of a revised habit that won General Chapter approval in the 1960’s. Clearly not designed by Dior, it did have the advantage of being easily modified and is still the basis of the habit worn in many provinces. The similar training that so many of us experienced has given us a common grounding and enabled a good province bonding  as well as giving us a fund of anecdotes and stories to share!

When Sister John retired she still had many resources to draw on.  She volunteered for the Missions and went to Botswana, a relatively new Ursuline development,  where she found a new lease of life and many openings for her artistic skills. She spent many happy years there, before returning to Shotton to be near her sister. There she became involved in Parish life. 

There are two facts that every one of her novices would remember. She was dog phobic and sun phobic, but somehow these phobias managed to disappear in Botswana, which had both dogs and sun in abundance.