Schmidt, Clara Regier (1914-2010)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2010 May 10 p. 7

Birth date: 1914 Oct 30

text of obituary:

Nurse who co-founded Paraguay hospital dies

By Mennonite Weekly Review staff

FILADELFIA, Paraguay — Clara Regier Schmidt, a nurse who helped establish a hospital for leprosy patients that became one of the leading Mennonite health ministries in Paraguay, died April 25. She was 95.

With the support of Paraguayan Mennonites, Schmidt and her husband, John, a physician, founded Kilometer 81, a clinic for people afflicted with leprosy, in eastern Paraguay in 1952.

The Schmidts pioneered new methods of leprosy treatment, removing some of the disease's stigma by mingling the leprosy patients with others and refusing to isolate them in colonies.

Born Oct. 30, 1914, to Ben C. and Agatha Andres Regier in rural Newton, Clara Regier graduated from Bethel College in North Newton and the Bethel Deaconess School of Nursing.

In 1943 she married John R. Schmidt, who had served two years in Paraguay with Mennonite Central Committee. They served in Paraguay together and then moved to Mountain Lake, Minn. In 1951, after inquiring to MCC about what was happening in Paraguay, they accepted a call to establish the leprosy mission.

In Like a Mustard Seed: Mennonites in Paraguay, author Edgar Stoesz tells of an incident shortly after the Schmidts' returned to Paraguay when she served coffee and cookies to neighbors who were angry about rumors that a leper colony was to be built. The neighbors "eventually departed, quietly leaving behind the bricks they had planned to rain down on her unfinished house," Stoesz wrote.

The Kilometer 81 hospital hospital is thriving today, serving patients with leprosy and as well as those with other medical needs.

Besides their service in Paraguay, the Schmidts also treated leprosy patients in Vietnam for a year in 1971. Returning again to Paraguay, they established a hospital and provided medical service to the poor in the isolated Tres Palas area.

In retirement, the Schmidts lived in Goessel, Kan., for several years. John R. Schmidt died in 2003.

Schmidt is survived by eight children, John Schmidt, Lisa Summerlot, Wesley Schmidt, David Schmidt, Marlena Fiol, Mary Lou Bonham, Chris Schmidt and Josie Friesen; numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren; a sister, Anna Harder of rural Whitewater, Kan.; and a brother, Edwin Regier of rural Newton.

Funeral services were held in Filadelfia. A memorial service is scheduled for 3 p.m. May 20 at First Mennonite Church in Newton.