Keenan, Agnes (1910–1979)

Agnes Keenan’s name is among the most prominent in the history of St. Catherine’s College—the school that became St. Catherine University. Although she was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1910, Keenan spent most of her life in St. Paul working as a teacher and community leader.

When Keenan was two years old, her family moved to the Twin Cities. At first, they settled in Minneapolis, but five years later they bought a home on Summit Avenue in St. Paul. Keenan, her younger sister, Anna, and her brother, Edward, spent their childhood there.

Both Keenan and her sister attended Derham Hall High School, which was on the campus of the College of St. Catherine at the time, before enrolling in the college itself. Keenan graduated in 1931 with majors in English and Latin and a minor in history.

Keenan worked as a teacher in local schools, including St. Paul’s Cleveland Junior High School, before attending Catholic University in Washington, D.C. After writing her thesis on Alice Meynell, the English poet and writer, she graduated with a master’s degree in English and philosophy in 1938. She then began her twenty-seven-year teaching career in English at the College of St. Catherine.

Keenan’s students were especially attracted to her courses on the Catholic Literary Revival and Dante. She was a prolific writer of book reviews and articles as well as a lecturer in the Twin Cities community. In the 1940s, she cooperated with the St. Paul Public Schools to develop a “practice teaching” program for educators.

A turning point in Keenan’s life arrived in 1953, when she joined an international Catholic congregation called the Daughters of the Heart of Mary. Formed during the French Revolution, the organization did not establish convents, use titles, or practice other customs that identified lay people as religious members. After joining the group, many members continued to practice their professions, lived at home, and cared for elderly parents. Keenan followed this example in St. Paul, where she continued to teach English at the College of St. Catherine, lived at home, and cared for her mother, who had a long-term cardiac condition.

Keenan took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the order, which Archbishop John Gregory Murray invited to St. Paul. In 1960, after her mother died, Keenan became a Superior for the Daughters of the Heart of Mary in the congregation’s St. Paul province. One of her first tasks in her new position was to find a place in St. Paul for holding retreats for women.

Louis Hill, son of the railroad magnate James J. Hill, had donated his mansion at 260 Summit Avenue to the Catholic Church in his will. The house, Keenan realized, was an ideal location for retreats. Because of her friendship with members of the Hill family and others in the local community, Keenan was able to restore the mansion and transform it from an office building into the Maryhill Retreat House.

In 1972, the College of St. Catherine awarded Keenan the Alexandrine Medal. The medal recognized her outstanding work in the community as well as her leadership roles in the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, which included assisting the director of the order in France and directing a mission in Ethiopia and a school in Addis Ababa.

In 1979, at a meeting of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary in Paris, Keenan died of a heart attack. She was sixty-eight years old.