Benedictine Sister Owen (Joan) Lindblad, 90, died Nov. 18 at Saint Scholastica Convent, St. Cloud. The Eucharist of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 10:30 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 27, at the Sacred Heart Chapel, Saint Benedict’s Monastery, St. Joseph, with burial in the monastery cemetery. Friends may call at Saint Scholastica Convent on Sunday, Nov. 26, from 3 to 4:15 p.m. with a prayer service at 3 p.m. or for a vigil prayer service at 7:30 p.m. at Saint Benedict’s Monastery. Visitation continues at 9 a.m. until the time of the funeral on Nov. 27.
The youngest child of Elmer and Rose (Meyers) Lindblad’s four children, she was born April 7, 1933, in Ashland, Wisconsin. She attended Beaser Grade School in Ashland until the family moved to Bremerton, Washington, in 1940. In 1950, she and her parents moved back to Wisconsin, and she entered Saint Benedict’s High School in St. Joseph, Minnesota, to complete her senior year of high school. She entered Saint Benedict’s Monastery Sept. 2, 1950, was received into the novitiate June 18, 1952, and was given the name Sister Owen. She made first monastic profession July 11, 1953, and perpetual monastic profession July 11, 1956, celebrated her golden jubilee in 2003 and her 60th anniversary in 2013.
Sister Owen earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education with a minor in philosophy from the College of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph. She also studied at the Diocesan Teachers’ College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and at St. Cloud University in St. Cloud. She later attended an Upper Midwest Writers’ Conference at Bemidji State University in Bemidji, Minnesota, which led to her writing career.
As an educator, Sister Owen served in schools in Luxemburg, Greenwald, Pearl Lake, Melrose, Maple Lake, Minnesota, St. Anthony and St. Mary’s Cathedral in St. Cloud. She was also organist and choir director at Greenwald and Pearl Lake and often helped in other parishes.
In the 1980s, Sister Owen was employed at Creative Concepts in St. Cloud as senior writer for “Escape to Minnesota Good Times” magazine and was a feature writer for St. Benedict’s Center’s “Carousel” magazine. In the late 1990s, she was a history columnist for the “St. Cloud Times.” Sister Owen also wrote for Vocational Biographies in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, and for more than 20 years, she critiqued and edited essays and poetry for a Japanese bilingual writer published in the “Japan Times” and elsewhere. She also wrote and published eight parish or family history books, and in 2000, Sister Owen began working as an assistant in Saint Benedict’s Monastery Archives.
Sister Owen is survived by her Benedictine community, seven nieces and nephews, and her grandnieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents, as well as her brothers and sisters-in-law, Elwood, Jack (Dorothy) and Lyle (Phyllis).
Please direct memorial gifts to the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict Outreach Ministries.