in the convent parlor, listening to women's troubles and comforting them. In 1887, together with another classmate from the Sacred Heart Academy who had become a nun as well, Elise "Liza" Miltenberger (b. 1848), Kitty Garesché opened the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco. Miltenberger was the daughter of an old St. Louis French family. The new Sacred Heart Academy had a three-member house council: Mother Mary O'Meara, Kitty Garesché and Elise Miltenberger; Garesché became Mistress General (headmistress). In 1900, Chopin wrote a poem for Kitty Garesche's 50th birthday: It is not all of life To cling together while the years glide past. It is not all of love To walk with clasped hands from first to last. That mystic garland which the spring did twine Of scented lilac and the new- blown rose, Faster than chains will hold my soul to thine Thro’ joy, and grief, thro’ life- unto its close. There are several letters of Garesché in Kate Chopin and Her Creole Stories by Daniel S. Rankin. Written in her old age, the letters tell of the friendship with Chopin, their school days and life in St. Louis in the 1860s. Later in life, Garesche became a teacher at the Sacred Heart Academy in Grosse Pointe becoming in the end its superior. She died on March 10, 1940, in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery, Detroit, Michigan. References External links 1850 births 1940 deaths American headmistresses People from St. Louis 20th-century American Roman Catholic nuns Founders of schools in the United States 19th-century American Roman Catholic nuns