Eileen Niedfield

Eileen Rae Niedfield (1920-2007), in religious life Sr. Mary Frederic Niedfield, MMS, MD, FACS was a medical missionary in India for nearly 40 years, two in Bhutan. She was notable for being in the first cohort of Georgetown University Medical School graduates that included women. She was valedictorian, and received the highest national board grades in pathology in the United States. Some students have called for the university to name a medical pavilion after her.

Alihaiderhusain M. Frederic Niedfield MD, MMS
Personal
Born	(1920-06-16)June 16, 1920 Brooklyn, New York
Died	March 19, 2007(2007-03-19) (aged 86) Orange, California
Religion	Roman Catholic
Nationality	American

Early life and education

She was born in Manhattan, New York, on 16 June 1920, the eldest daughter of Alma Marie Thor (1891-1971) and Joseph Henry Niedfield (1893-1952). The family briefly lived in Bedford and Flatbush before settling in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. Her mother Alma Marie (Thor) Niedfield was descended from German and Irish immigrants and worked as a model and stage actor during her childhood, including with James Montgomery Flagg. Sr. Niedfield's maternal grandmother, Margaret Fagan (1869-1942), immigrated to New York during the Great Famine of Ireland. As an adult, she worked as a bookkeeper for a lace import company. Sr./Dr. Niedfield's father, Joseph Niedfield, was descended from German immigrants and converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism as a young man. As an adult, he served in the New York 27th Infantry Division when it was called up to national service in Mexico (1916-1917) and France (1917-1918). After the war, he worked as a career firefighter in the FDNY, retiring as a lieutenant.

Graduation day as valedictorian, June 11, 1951, Georgetown University School of Medicine.

Her younger sister, Marjorie Alma Niedfield (1922-2011), earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing and worked as a Registered Nurse for many years. She married Daniel Joseph Kiernan (1918-1984) and together they had four children. They worked to raise funds and awareness throughout Sr./Dr. Niedfield's years of missionary work.

Niedfield attended St. Savior Parish Elementary School of Brooklyn, graduating in 1933. She then continued in its middle and high school, and founded the Skyline newspaper in 1938 with Sister M. Rachael, S. S. N. D. They also worked together on the first sodality (a group founded to promote the spiritual works of mercy and corporal works of mercy) at St. Savior, and Niedfield was elected its first prefect. She graduated in May, 1938.

In 1938 she began university study at Manhattanville College, run by the Society of the Sacred Heart/RSCJ. She played field hockey, and co-wrote a play that was presented in November. During her first semester of college, she attended a speech by Mother Anna Maria Dengel, also an MD, who had founded the Medical Mission Sisters of Philadelphia in 1925. Niedfield was so impressed she left college after her first semester to enter the MMS as a postulant on February 11, 1939. She took the habit and became Sister Mary Frederic, making her first public vows on August 15, 1941. At the time, nuns were asked to take the name of a male saint or family member, so she chose Saint Frédéric in honor of her uncle and godfather, Frederick Thor (1900-1985).

She then transferred to Trinity College in Washington, DC (now Trinity Washington University), graduating with a bachelor of science degree in Chemistry, magna cum laude, in 1945. Niedfield took her perpetual vows on August 15, 1945 and her final vows a year later on August 15, 1946. In the two years between college and medical school she studied X-ray techniques for a year, and spent six months at a Catholic clinic in Atlanta that served Black patients (all medical facilities were segregated in those years). It was then known as the Catholic Colored Clinic in Atlanta, and later as Southwest_Atlanta_Hospital, now closed. She then continued to Georgetown University Medical School, enrolling in 1947. She graduated from the Georgetown University School of Medicine on June 11, 1951, as class valedictorian alongside four other women who together were the first to graduate in the program's 101-year history. She graduated summa cum laude, and received a gold medal for highest achievement in bacteriology. She then qualified as a surgeon with her residency at Georgetown University Hospital (now part of MedStar).

During 1951 she interned for one year at St. Michael's Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. Then on October 1, 1952, she began work as a junior resident surgeon at Arlington Hospital in Northern Virginia, near Washington, DC, becoming the first member of a religious community to serve as a resident at that hospital.

After an internship and residency, she returned to Georgetown University for a Master of Science in Surgery degree, which she received in 1954. Niedfield served as the Chief Resident for Surgery at Georgetown University Hospital from 1954-1955.

Missionary service in India and Bhutan

With a tiger cub in India.

She studied the Hindustani language in Washington, DC, earned a master's in surgery (see last paragraph, above), and then sailed for South Asia in 1955. The MMS operated seven hospitals in South Asia, four in India and three in Pakistan, eventually expanding to eleven. She joined Dr. Ruth Taggart, a graduate of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, who was the hospital superintendent. Cumulatively she spent nearly 40 years working in a variety of roles including Surgeon, Chief of Surgery, and Hospital Superintendent, at Kurji Holy Family Hospital, Village of Mandar, Rachi District, State of Bihar, with four years (1960–64) in Patna, India, serving many Muslim women whose husbands and fathers would not allow them to be treated by male doctors. The hospital had 130 beds, averaged 600 major surgical cases per year, and had 3,000 total inpatients annually. The hospital included general care, surgery, obstetrics-gynecology, pediatrics, a pharmacy, a substance abuse detox center, and a nursing school all of which she oversaw while serving as Hospital Superintendent (1987-1992).

Her congregation and Mother Teresa's were connected, as Mother worked briefly at one of the Medical Mission Sisters' hospitals, and they and the Missionaries of Charity periodically trained one another's nurses. She was a bi-monthly columnist for the MMS, contributing a column titled "The Doctor's Diary." On April 24, 1967, the work of the MMS was honored by Representative Joshua Eilberg (D-Pennsylvania) when he read a citation including her name into The Congressional Record. In the book The Hills Around Me, Imtiaz Fiona Griffiths describes how Dr. Niedfield saved her husband's life in India by performing emergency surgery.

A season in Bhutan

Niedfield also spent two years (1979-1981) in Bhutan, a kingdom on the border between Tibet and India. There she served as the Zonal Medical Officer and as the Chief Medical Officer at the 60-bed Tashigang Civil Hospital in eastern Bhutan near the Chinese border. Patients suffering from leprosy and tuberculosis were common. Some of the health centers in the zone were only accessible on horseback. Creating and conducting short courses on basic medical care, and issuing standing orders for simple medical conditions, were vital, as it was impossible to get to each center across the large zone more than four times each year.

The archivist for the Medical Mission Sisters said went at the request of government officials who wanted to improve their health system. She was stationed in Tashigang and worked as the Medical Superintendent of the hospital there. She was also a Zonal Medical Officer for northeast Bhutan. A family member wrote on Ancestry, "She... [trained] local schoolteachers and agricultural workers in basic medicine and health care. She even trained a border post radio operator working in an area so remote that no professionals could reach it during the winter. She was known, if needed, to suspend an operation in order to draw a unit of her own type 0 blood to transfuse the patient before continuing with the surgery."

Return to India

In 1966 she returned to the United States to complete some requirements of the American Board of Surgery that had recently been augmented, become a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and be listed as a board-certified surgeon. She also took the opportunity to stuff a suitcase with IV glucose mixture because of a sugar shortage in India during a famine. "It's only enough for four or five operations," she told a correspondent for the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, "but it might well save a life." Supplies were a constant worry. While in India she started a charity, "Sr. Niedfield's Brothers," to collect funds for surgical instruments and medical supplies. Dr. George Ware in Washington, DC, collected the money and sent it to her.

Other medical service and legacy

During her time as a missionary, she was brought back to the US for "renewal" including training, time with family, and relaxation. Niedfield dedicated one of these trips (1976-1977) in service as a staff physician with the American Medical Association’s “Project USA” program in support of the US Department of Health, Education, & Welfare. Her time was spent at the Aberdeen Area Indian Health Service (South Dakota), Omaha-Winnebago Service Unit (South Dakota), & Ft. Defiance Indian Hospital (Arizona).

In 1992 she moved to San Diego to serve HIV and AIDS patients. "I was interested in AIDS because I felt there was a great need not just medically but also socially and spiritually," she told a reporter. In those years she was also was a part-time volunteer at the St. Vincent de Paul Village-Joan Kroc Medical Clinic in San Diego, serving people experiencing homelessness. During her time in San Diego, Niedfield also worked part time as a Primary Care Physician in Internal Medicine at the San Diego Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic (1993-2001), and as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine for UC San Diego.

Inspiration, retirement, and death

Reflecting on her long career, she wrote about her experiences, challenges, friendships, and inspirations. She noted three specific things that she drew inspiration from. The first was based on Micah 6:8 and written as “What does the Lord ask of me – to do justice, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly before God.” The second was "The Sacrament of the Present Moment – to do the best that one can at this particular moment in time.” The third was “We must always have an open heart, a heart open to all suffering and pain.”

In 2001, largely due to failing eyesight, she retired from practicing medicine at the age of 81 and moved to a retirement home in Orange, California, run by the Sisters of St. Joseph. She died on 19 March 2007 and is buried at the Fox Chase Medical Mission Sisters center in Philadelphia.