The room’s atmosphere is inspiring and peaceful. Here Kathleen, the therapist and spiritual guide, listens to people, and joins with them in two weekly meditation sessions. Right away a wooden copy of the Madonna of Einsiedeln and a white candle, adorned with a colorful Kaelin coat-of-arms, catch the eye.
With Kathleen, Einsiedeln has its place in her life; she opens her album of memories and tells of her three visits to the home village of her grandfather, Joseph Meinrad Kaelin. “I feel such a close connection to Euthal and Einsiedeln.”
In 1997, Kathleen Kaelin traveled for the first time to Switzerland to retrace the steps of her grandfather. “For two weeks I attended a psychology and spirituality congress in Einsiedeln’s educational center, then stayed on for another week in order to learn more about my roots. Edith Zehnder, as well as her father Alfred Zehnder, helped me enormously. And Father Ansgar Schuler of the monastery in Einsiedeln translated for me so that I could contact people in Euthal - Rosa for instance, who had met my great-grandfather Joseph Maria Kaelin on his walks through the village. I learned that the house of my forebears had once stood beside today’s village store. I met the Winets, also Anna Marty, in Euthal who gave me my great-grandfather’s obituary picture. Joseph Maria had a long life, and for a time he was the oldest person in Einsiedeln as well as in Canton Schwyz. He died in 1944, just short of his hundredth birthday. I even have the Einsiedeln Anzeiger’s obituary of July 7, 1944. Not knowing much German, Father Ansgar translated some of it for me.”
What is known about grandfather’s emigration? “In our family one claims that in 1888, at age 18, Joseph Meinrad Kaelin had traveled to American alone as a blind passenger, a stowaway. He didn’t have the money for the boat ticket, and we don’t know whether he had a passport. Only two small prayer books, written in German, accompanied him on the long journey.
Grandfather never spoke about his emigration nor did anybody ask him about it that we are aware of.” It is only known that Joseph Meinrad Kaelin never returned to his old homeland, nor did he ever again see his parents or sibblings
Kathleen Kaelin: “When on my second trip, as I returned by train from Einsiedeln, I started to cry and couldn’t stop. I was feeling what he must have suffered. And all the tears he wasn’t able to shed, I found myself shedding - moments of ancestral grieving. Since his death, I felt a very close connection with my grandfather.”
Joseph Meinrad Kaelin established himself in Louisville and married the German immigrant Margaret Bienlein. Together, they had eleven or twelve children. “I don’t know whether my grandmother had received the land from her parents. In any case, together the two managed the Kaelin dairy farm of 50 acres (ca. 20 hectares). My grandfather worked hard and probably had no time to think about his origins. My family still has some of the same work ethic.”
Kathleen remembers Joseph Meinrad Kaelin, her grandfather on her father’s side. “A pity that I never asked him about his youth, his time at home in Einsiedeln. I remember that he was a kind and quiet man, and that at table he prayed the ‘Our Father’ in German. Services at St. Denis Church, his family, and his farm were the cornerstones of his life.”
Kathleen doesn’t know whether he had contact with other immigrants from Einsiedeln, perhaps through gatherings at a place called Swiss Park in Louisville, which no longer exists. “I wish now that I had asked him so much more. He was generous. He enabled my father and my uncle to build houses for the next generation on his farmland. My father, Sylvester Cornelius, was able to build a $2000 home near the parental farmhouse for our soon to be seven-member family. I had a wonderful childhood, playing in the corn fields, helping with the crops and in the dairy barn with the cows.
My brother and sister also drove the tractor gathering in hay for the cows. I missed some of that, because at age 13, I was sent to a boarding high school, hours from home.”
Entering in 1956 Mount St. Joseph Academy, known for its values of faith and education and run by the Ursuline Sisters, abruptly changed Kathleen’s life. “The first years I suffered incredible homesickness, missing family and home.
Only in the fourth year did I begin to feel more at home.” And in 1960 she joined the Mount St. Joseph Ursuline Community near Owensboro, Kentucky. “I was drawn to a spiritual path”, she explains, and unlike today, back then, there were few opportunities for such. Religious life in the 1960s did not allow her to leave the monastery, even in 1961 to attend the burial of her beloved grandfather. Kathleen Kaelin is a seeker, has always been, and still is today. In this she feels a closeness to her grandfather. “Wasn’t he also a seeker, who still so young embarked in search of his destiny across the Atlantic away from the small Euthal farm?” Later, Kathleen’s path led her to Missouri as a teacher, then to Cleveland for further study, leading to a Master’s Degree in Religious Education. While teaching a social justice course at what is now Brescia University, she was drawn to a month-long experience living in a poor barrio in Mexico, and later experiencing the violence in Guatemala. Finally in the 1990s, she went to Palo Alto in California where she earned a second Master’s Degree in psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Encountering Buddhism and eastern spirituality and wisdom, along with travels to India, have enriched her life and opened new paths wich she follows in her work today as transpersonal therapist, spiritual guide, and meditation teacher.
Before I leave, Kathleen observes: “My roots are in Euthal and Einsiedeln. I experience home there, and treasure the moments I’ve walked the sacred ground there. I never imagined that anyone from there would ever come to Louisville to get to know and explore our history and the continuation of our ancestors home here. It’s created a wonderful and unique bond, reminding me that we are all one family. My grandfather would be very proud.
Thank you!”
