Ann Russell Miller, a former wealthy San Francisco socialite turned Chicago-area nun, died last Friday. She was 92.
Miller lived a luxurious life in the city before she abruptly left to become a nun in 1989 and never returned, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Between Miller and her late husband Richard Miller, son of the founder of PG&E, they have lineage that includes the Folgers coffee family and the founder of Wells Fargo. Her friends included Marie Gallo (California wine empire), singer Loretta Lynn, Nancy Reagan, and comedian Phyllis Diller, among many others.
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She raised 10 children in a Pacific Heights mansion and lived a life of extravagance among the most elite in San Francisco.
Suddenly in 1989, just a day after her 61st birthday and five years after her husband’s death, Miller left the city and entered a nunnery, joining the Order of Discalced Carmelites just outside of Chicago.
She officially became a bride of Christ, Sister Mary Joseph, in 1994 and spent the final 31 years of her life at the nunnery, never hugging her family again, and only seeing them with a double row of iron bars between them.
It was “the absolute antithesis of how she lived her life up until then,” Mark Miller, her eldest son, told the paper. He tweeted a loving tribute to his mother upon her death.
Miller will be buried in a private funeral in Des Plaines, Ill on Wednesday, according to the family.
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