A memorial Mass for Sister John Kenneth Scott was celebrated Dec. 7 at Nazareth Living Center Chapel in south St. Louis County. A nurse and former administrator of Nazareth who was a Sister of St. Joseph for 60 years, Sister John Kenneth died Dec. 3 at Nazareth of end-stage dementia at age 91.
Born in Escanaba, Mich., she received nursing training with the Daughters of Charity at Providence Hospital in Detroit and then became a nurse with the U.S. Army, serving two years. She entered the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1956. Sister John Kenneth made her final profession in 1964. She earned a bachelor's degree in nursing education from Marquette University in 1952 and a master's degree in nursing education administration from Catholic University of America in 1965.
Sister John Kenneth began her ministry of nursing at St. Joseph Hospital in Kirkwood, where she served as the nursing supervisor. In the 1970s, she began work at Cardinal Ritter Institute (now Senior Services) in St. Louis where she helped begin a home nursing program. Her task was to teach the home health care nurses how to minister to people in their homes. She also was part of the CACE program that led to and operated the nursing home on the Cardinal Carberry Campus of Cardinal Ritter in Shrewsbury. She served as a staff nurse at Alexian Brothers Hospital in St. Louis from 1979-82 and again from 1991-92 and was administrator of Nazareth from 1982-89.
In St. Louis, she served as provincial house bookkeeper at St. Joseph Motherhouse from 1993-2001. She served in the province office of aging as a driver from 2001-06 and as a volunteer at St. Joseph Community during those years before retiring to Nazareth in 2007.
Elsewhere, Sister John Kenneth served in nursing education, director of a nursing school and in hospital administration in Michigan. She was an assistant administrator at a hospital in St. Joseph, Mo., and administrator of a hospital in Los Angeles.
Survivors include a brother, K. John Scott of Baldwinsville, N.Y. Burial was in Resurrection Cemetery.