Marilyn Kathryn Mahla was born on August 23, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Joseph A. and Helen (Henke) Mahla. She graduated from Sacred Heart High School in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh and later entered the Sisters of Charity from Sacred Heart Parish.

When she entered on September 8, 1951, the feast of the Nativity of Mary, Marilyn had just celebrated her 23rd birthday two weeks prior, had completed two years at the University of Pittsburgh, and had earned a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology, Education, and Social Studies from Penn State University. She had even worked as a medical social worker at a hospital in Virginia.

Sister Jeremy began teaching junior and senior high school students in the Altoona-Johnstown and Pittsburgh Dioceses. In 1962, she seized the opportunity to go farther afield. The convent had recently started working with an all-girls' high school, St. Joseph's in Kang Jin, South Korea, and she volunteered to go teach English. She soon picked up the Korean language and stayed for 7 years, returning again in 1992-1993.

Upon returning to the United States in 1969, with a Master's Degree in Education of the Deaf from the University of Illinois, she began teaching science at the DePaul School for Hearing and Speech. The school uses the oral method, in which students are taught to read lips and speak without sign language. Sister Jeremy was a beloved member of the DePaul faculty for over three decades. A co-teacher described Sister Jeremy as a dynamic, devoted teacher who planted trees across the school campus, set up 55-gallon fish tanks outside her science room, and bred birds to help her students learn about biology.

In 2000, she spent a year in Fort Portal, Uganda, East Africa, as a liaison with the Daughters of St. Therese of the Child Jesus. She taught computer skills to the sisters and offered assistance to them in developing their English speaking and writing skills.

The Sisters in Uganda wrote of her: "She has challenged us in very many things, especially her great love for people, animals, birds, and creation in general, most of all her love for God. . .Sister Jeremy is surely a woman of great courage who is not afraid of venturing into the unknown, so long as her trust is firmly placed in God."

When she returned from Africa, Sister Jeremy taught science and mathematics at Seton-LaSalle High School from 2001 until 2006. She returned to DePaul School for Hearing and Speech, teaching science and mathematics there until 2009. She volunteered to return to Korea again from 2009-2011 to teach English.

An adventurer with boundless energy, Sister Jeremy took every opportunity to explore the world, whether through completing an Outward Bound survival challenge (23 days of outdoor living that included whitewater rafting and mountain climbing), or becoming a licensed scuba diver. In the 1970s, to train for the Outward Bound trip, she filled a backpack with rocks and walked up and down a hill behind the DePaul campus, then located in Mt. Lebanon. She was also a flutist, a poet, a photographer, and a cosmologist.

Her love of science found her involved in the study of DNA Science under the auspices of the National Science Foundation. Her ongoing interest in space led her to a two-week NASA program at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Her love of learning was insatiable.

When Sister Jeremy Mahla learned that the Carnegie Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped relied on volunteers to narrate audio books on local topics, she thought she might be able to help.

Her first project was to narrate a several-hundred-page biography of Elizabeth Ann Seton, the patron saint and founder of her order, the Sisters of Charity. Through the library's apprenticeship program, she learned how to use sound editing software and spent a year preparing the recording for its release.

Sister Jeremy also narrated long novels and edited children's books read by students at the Ellis School in Shadyside. Although she was in her 80s and her own eyesight was beginning to deteriorate, she arrived at the recording studio every day for 6 years, sometimes working right through lunch. She was probably responsible for more than 50 books in the library's collection.

Many years ago Seton Hill published an interview with Sister Jeremy in which she said: "Each of us, regardless of our past, regardless of our abilities, has an obligation to make a difference in this world."

Sister Mary Jeremy Mahla, SC, passed away at Caritas Christi, the motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill, in Greensburg, on July 17 at the age of 88. She was preceded in death by her parents and a brother, Joseph A., Jr.

Funeral Mass was celebrated in the Chapel of the Assumption at Caritas Christi on July 20, 2017.

Information from the SC Website, Funeral Liturgy Reflection by Sr. Patricia Mary Wilson, SC; and a July 22, 2017, article in the Post-Gazette. Submitted by Member Angela (#48520699), who taught with the Sisters of Charity for 30 years.