Sister Virginia Burgardt, 97, died March 24 at the Dominican Sisters of Peace Motherhouse in Great Bend, Kansas. She was born in 1928, in Holcomb, Kansas and entered the Dominican Sisters Community in 1946. 2026 marked 76 years of consecrated religious life for Sister Virginia.
Sr. Virginia taught primary grades at Strong City, Dubuque, and Schulte, Kansas. She then ran the diet kitchen in the Kansas City convent, where she cooked and baked for Sisters who had special diets and provided meals for priests and visitors.
For more than ten years she served as a missionary in Africa. During those years she wore a variety of hats - she was a practical nurse, a dietician, a teacher, and worked in the formation of the native sisters who entered the new community being formed in Nigeria. In her memories of time spent as a missionary, she wrote, “It didn’t take me long to fit into a routine of being helpful in every way I could. I taught our helpers how to clean house, how to care for the yard, the chickens, and later the garden, how to prepare meals and make them nutritious.”
After a Sabbatical in the 1970s, she worked in Garden City as a nurse’s aide before taking time to care for her mother. During her time Garden City, Kansas, she also worked as a teacher’s aide at St. Dominic School and worked at a hearing aid office.
In 2007, she retired to the Great Bend Motherhouse, where she actively volunteered for many years.
Sr Virginia’s Remembrance Service was held Monday, March 30 and her Funeral Service was held Tuesday, March 31. Both were in the Great Bend Convent Chapel.
Sr. Renee Dreiling shared more of Sr. Virginia’s words about the time she spent serving as a missionary during the March 30 service, “Most of all, I loved the simple, good people I found there…the Nigerian people taught me a great love for simplicity. They had very little, and I saw that I could do with much less. As I saw them spending most of their time collecting firewood and pounding grain and singing all the while, I took a fresh look at my own life.” Sr. Renee went on to reflect, “Her heart always remained in Nigeria. She will enjoy being reunited with our own Sister Missionaries in heaven, as well as with those Nigerian people who have gone before her. We will remember and miss her simple joy, her kind smile, her gentle way of living that simple life that she learned in Nigeria.”
Sr. Virginia was preceded in death by her parents, sisters Anna Dreiling, Mary Baier, Katherine (Sr. Dorothy Burgardt, OP), Rosie Knoll, and Helen Uhrich. Brothers John, Andrew, Jake, Peter, George, and Joseph also predeceased her. She is survived by her brother and sister-in-law, Clarence (Cheryl) Burgardt, many nieces and nephews, including Sister Renee Dreiling, and numerous great nieces and nephews.
Memorial gifts in our Sister’s memory may be sent to the Dominican Sisters of Peace, Office of Mission Advancement 2320 Airport Drive, Columbus, OH 43219, or submitted securely by going here.