Sister Pat Kelley
Those of us associated with the National Fuel Funds Network best know Sr. Pat, as she was affectionately called, as being a founding member of the NFFN and driving force behind the organization from its infancy.
Sr. Pat entered her religious community, the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, after graduating from Incarnate Word Academy in St. Louis in 1955. She received her bachelors and master’s degrees from Incarnate Word College in San Antonio.
During her professional life, Sr. Pat worked as a teacher, vocational counselor and volunteer probation and parole officer in hospitals and in pastoral service. After 25 years of religious life, Sr. Pat went to Sedona, Ariz. in 1980 for a yearlong retreat. She returned determined to devote the rest of her life to helping the poor and elderly.
In March 1981 she was selected to administer a one-year $20,000 grant from the National Council of Senior Citizens. The grant established “Missouri Project Energycare” to assist low- and fixed-income elderly with energy-related needs. The project came about as a result of the terrible summer of 1980 when more than 1,500 elderly across the nation died of heat-related causes.
The following year, Laclede Gas Co. in St. Louis approached Sr. Pat to develop the first private fuel and energy assistance fund in the St. Louis area, Dollar-Help, Inc. Since its inception, Dollar-Help has distributed millions of dollars on behalf of thousands of low-income families and elderly people in eastern Missouri to help them pay delinquent home heating bills.
By 1983, just two years after it was established, federal funding for Missouri Project Energycare ceased. In September of that year, Sr. Pat continued the work she had begun by founding Missouri Energycare, Inc. as an independent nonprofit organization. She served as the organization’s president and executive director.
In 1984, Sr. Pat was the recipient of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat’s prestigious Humanities Award – the only woman so honored in the award’s 26-year history.
On Monday September 28, 1987, Sr. Pat was found murdered in her office, a victim of senseless violence. News of her death made headlines. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial called her “sort of a saint” and stated that “she raised not only money – she also raised the consciousness of those who could make a difference in the plight of those who too often have to do without.”
Sister’s work on local, state and national levels as a ‘voice of the poor’ to elected public policy makers also was noted in the Congressional Record by such respected members of Congress as Senator John C. Danforth of Missouri, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and the Honorable Jack Buechner of Missouri.
Following her tragic death, Sr. Pat posthumously received many awards and honors including a Public Service Award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Support Administration. The NFFN established a special Travel Scholarship Fund in her honor and an annual achievement award that bears her name.
The organizations Sr. Pat helped found are active today and continuing the work she began. Sister’s dream was simple: to keep the elderly, ill and low-income citizens of America safe, comfortable and in their own homes. Her vision, leadership and personal energy contributed to the actualization of her desire, in the words of her favorite Ninth Psalm, that “the needy will not be forgotten not the hope of the poor taken away.”