
Suor Blandina Segale

Biography
Traveling alone along dusty trails by train and stagecoach in the unexplored lands of the far south-west, she arrived in Trinidad on December 9, 1872. Among her first battles, she fought against lynching, the rough justice practiced at the time in those places. She had contacts with the bandits who roamed the prairies that would soon be inhabited by settlers, and was always able establish a human contact even with criminals.
Once she learned that a member of the Billy the Kid's gang was seriously wounded, and left alone to die in a shack: Blandina went to him and leaning over the wounded man said harshly: "I see that with your hard head they won't be able to kill you even with a blow at the head", and then began treating him and saved his life. Later the bandit said that if she had spoken of repentance or offered prayers he would have sent her to hell, instead she saved his life.
In December 1873 Blandina was ordered by her Mother Superior to move to Santa Fe. There, despite the scarcity of resources, she built schools and orphanages, continuing to visit the mines in the area and the construction sites of the railway. Raised funds for the construction of the St. Vincent Hospital and for the care of the indigent. He visited and took care of Billy the Kid and other prisoners imprisoned in New Mexico.
In 1882 she was entrusted with the reconstruction of the destroyed monastery in Albuquerque. In vain she tried to build a hospital in that location, and was recalled in 1889 to Trinidad, where her right to teach in the local school was questioned, since she wore a nun's dress. She proudly defended her right according to the Constitution to teach while wearing her religious habit, but, the ostracism prevailed and Blandina had to return back to Albuquerque where, in 1901, she completed the construction of the St. Joseph Hospital. In her elderly years she returned to Cincinnati, and worked until her death among the Italian immigrant community.
Her achievements
In her letters about Billy the Kid she wrote "He had blue -gray eyes, a rosy complexion, and the air of a little boy... he could choose the right path and instead he chose the wrong" and when she learned of his death, said: "Poor Billy the Kid, thus ends the career of a young man who started down the slope at the age of twelve to avenge an insult that had been done to his mother..."
In her later years, she founded an assistance center for Italian immigrants, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the first in the States.

Suggested reading and links
- Meeting Billy the Kid
- At the End of the Santa Fe Trail on sale at Amazon
Cultural Heritage Sections
Italian Genealogy
Info on Italian Regions
