Barbara Hickel

Barbara Hickel “graduated” to heaven on Aug. 9, 2011 from St. John’s Liggett Cottage. Liggett had been her home for the past year after a stroke finally quieted her body and amazing mind. The staff at St. John’s had become part of her family as they lovingly cared for her.

Barbara’s family struggled to find the words to describe her and her life for this obituary. Then Barbara (and God) intervened, and her family found her own writings where she had described her earthly journey and what was important to her. The following words were written by her. Excerpts here emphasize her spiritual life which defined her.

“I was raised in a Christian/Lutheran boarding home in Minneapolis from the time I was 2.5 years of age. I had been born in Rochester, Minn., on Oct. 14, 1927 to Ruth Listerud and a father who abandoned us almost immediately.

The depression arrived and my mother discovered that a job in Minneapolis would provide more adequately for us. That meant she had to place the custodial care of me in a boarding home 10 blocks from her sleeping room. I was “accepted” in that Swedish home of Ingrid and Ruth Carlson on a three-month trial basis and stayed for 18 years.

My early years were centered around church activities. My first Sunday School teacher, Lydia, powerfully modeled Jesus’ love. She remained a life-long friend until her death at 101.

I graduated from Macalester College in 1948 with a major in sociology and followed that with the U of MN’s graduate school of social work.

Kenny Hickel and I were married on a Sunday in June of 1951. We moved to Billings, a town we greatly loved. The Boy Scout cabin on Ryniker Drive was our first home.

We were blessed with two daughters, Debbie and Kissy, and I worked as a case worker for Lutheran Welfare of Mont. (now LSS) for five years in the eastern half of Montana. Gifts of relationships with Christian friends, a church that reactivated our spiritual lives and taught our children, and a community that cared for its people nourished our first eight years of marriage.

Career decisions for Kenny prompted a six-year interlude in California. Those years were tough. We missed a sense of “community” both in and outside the church. God in his graciousness led us right back to Billings in 1965 and into the business world.

Our business thrived, our children matured, and we were blessed to spend summers at Flathead Lake. Then, in 1970 I was brought to a screeching halt by rheumatoid arthritis and its terrible pain. Gradually after several years I discovered I was thankful not only for God’s presence but for the disease itself. It taught me what it means to be in a situation over which one has no control. It taught me about ‘losses’ of physical pain, and of emotional and spiritual quandary.

Since 1970 I have felt both called and driven to experience God in any way possible. After attending Luther Seminary in St. Paul, I was called to American Lutheran Church as an Associate in Ministry, where I served until December 1999. I was also under call to the Montana Women’s Prison and to the greater Billings community.

I sincerely believe that anyone who is listening to His or Her Lord is also called to ‘ministry’…uniquely designed for him or her by the Master Designer.

Therefore, I am and will remain ‘called’ until death frees me in love to a new ministry whose dimensions remain one of God’s great mysteries. Above all else, I want to hear my Lord say to me someday, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ It is not for my glory that I want to hear those words but for His glory.”

The family encourages memorials to either St. John’s Lutheran Foundation, 2429 Mission Way, Billings, MT 59102 or to Luther Seminary, 2481 Como Ave., St. Paul, MN 55108.