After reading about Mother Teresa and her work on behalf of the poor in Calcutta, Patricia Kump was so touched and inspired that she wrote the nun a letter. That letter, written in 1960, was the first of hundreds they exchanged, and it sparked a friendship that lasted for more than 30 years.
The letters, 400 of which are contained in the archives of the Missionaries of Charity in Rome, a Roman Catholic religious order established in 1950 by Mother Teresa, refer to the times Mother Teresa stayed with Kump in her Golden Valley home and to their travels throughout the United States and Europe, but mostly to their efforts to reach out to the poor, said Kump's son John, of Lake Elmo.
"Her life was all about service," he said of his mother, who died of complications from a stroke March 8 at St. Therese Home in New Hope. She was 81.
Kump learned the lesson of generosity while growing up in a loving family in St. Paul. She helped start a Montessori preschool in north Minneapolis and volunteered at Minneapolis' former St. Mary's Hospital and the Margaret Berry Settlement House.
After meeting Mother Teresa, Kump established the U.S. chapter of the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, a large network of lay volunteers involved in service projects and charity work to AIDS patients, the hungry and homeless and those in hospice care. Kump edited a newsletter for 30,000 members and later took on editing Mother Teresa's Co-Worker International newsletter, John said.
Kump participated in the beatification of Mother Teresa conducted Oct. 19, 2003, by Pope John Paul II, said the Rev. Peter Laird, vice rector, director of seminarians and assistant professor of moral theology at the St. Paul Seminary and the School of Divinity at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.
In many ways, Kump was like Mother Teresa, Laird said.
"Patricia would never go past somebody without stopping," he said. "She could see a person who was hungry, homeless or in grief and she had the uncanny ability to attend to their need with a word, smile or a buck. She did it out of her Christian conviction."
Kump, who also was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the peace movement concerning the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, was recognized as the Laywoman Volunteer of the Year in 1978 by the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Woman. In 2007, she was named Distinguished Alumna of the Year by Visitation Convent School in Mendota Heights.
Kump liked to knit and was a great storyteller, John said.
In addition to her son John, Kump is survived by her husband, Warren; two daughters, Theresa Kump Leghorn of New Rochelle, N.Y., and Mary Seely, of Brooklyn Center; another son, Lee Kump, of Port Matilda, Pa.; three sisters, Mary Lewandowski of Phoenix, Geraldine Boyer of Wayzata, and Jean Charlotte of Washington, D.C., and six grandchildren.
Services have been held.
