I was pleased to read Mary Schmich’s Aug. 16 column (Metro) on the Chicago park dedicated to Jane Addams. Now let’s hope that Ms. Schmich’s wish is granted: that a “second woman will get a memorial park of her own.”
I nominate Agatha O’Brien, a young Irish nun who came to Chicago in 1846 at age 24. She died in the city eight years later after long days of nursing cholera victims. In those eight years, she and Chicago’s first Sisters of Mercy established two orphanages, three Sunday schools, two free schools for poor children, a hospital, an employment bureau for working girls and a night school for immigrant adults. And Mother Agatha O’Brien’s life work was completed before Jane Addams or Ellen Gates Starr, the founders of Hull House, were even born.
