Patricia Marie Hix, CSJ
May 13, 1925 - January 13, 2026
Enjoyed ministry, people and life
May 13,1925, Leslie and Catherine (Corrigan) Hix, of Kansas City, Missouri, welcomed a daughter whom they named Dorothy Marie. She grew up with three sisters and one brother. She remembered that her parents “encouraged independence” and “stressed goodness.” Dorothy was “interested in outdoor activities ... but [also] enjoyed dance classes.”
She was taught by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth in elementary school. She met the Sisters of St. Joseph at Redemptorist High School where she “grew to love the CSJs and was especially influenced by Sister Elizabeth Amend.” After graduation, she entered the Sisters of St. Joseph, receiving the habit and the name Sister Patricia Marie on March 19, 1942.
Sister Patricia recalled that “getting a college education at Fontbonne while teaching full-time was not easy but I did have excellent math and science teachers who prepared me well for St. Louis University where I earned a master’s degree in mathematics and took physics courses for teaching in the elementary and the secondary school… Sister Wilma Broughton was my physics teacher at Fontbonne. She was the best teacher I ever had.”
S. Patricia’s teaching ministry began in 1945 at St. Patrick Grade School in University City, Missouri. She continued teaching elementary and/or primary grades in Missouri. In 1946, she taught at Our Lady of the Presentation, and in 1948, returned to St. Patrick School. Then, in 1950, she moved to Immaculate Conception in Montgomery City but returned to St. Louis to teach at St. Rita’s in 1953. She moved into secondary education in 1954, teaching mathematics, first at Redemptorist in Kansas City and then at St. Thomas Aquinas in Florissant, in 1956. She returned to teaching elementary students at Blessed Sacrament in St. Louis in 1957.
In 1961, she began a new page in her ministry as the registrar at Fontbonne College, while also on the teaching faculty. Then, in 1964, she accepted the position of academic dean at Avila College (now Avila University) in Kansas City. In 1971, S. Patricia embarked on a new adventure when joyfully accepting a job offer to teach mathematics in the upper grades at St. Joseph’s Institute for the Deaf (now St. Joseph Hearing + Speech) in University City, Missouri, and then its new home in Chesterfield, Missouri. In 1991, she retired from teaching but continued her ministry as the afternoon receptionist at St. Joseph Institute.
In 2005, S. Patricia moved to Nazareth Living Center where she spent her days visiting sisters. In her 2006 oral history, she shared, “Now I am here at Nazareth, and coming here was one of the best decisions that I have ever made. I feel like I have come home.” She enjoyed spending her time visiting the sisters.
However, in 2011, she decided to volunteer as a companion to Sister Gretchen Wagner in Cutbank, Montana. Later on, in 2019, as S. Patricia’s health began to deteriorate, she and S. Gretchen moved to Minnetonka, Minnesota, where health care was more easily available. S. Patricia returned to Nazareth in 2023, celebrating her 100th birthday in 2025.
By Sister Helen Oates