Sadie M Philbrick

Sadie M. Philbrick, passed away on Sunday, August 30, 2026, at Grand Arbor in Alexandria, Minnesota. Visitation will be on Thursday, September 3, 2026, from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm at the First Evangelical Free Church in Benson, Minnesota, with the funeral service to follow at 1:00 p.m. Pastor Daniel Runke will officiate. Burial will be at Benson City Cemetery. Zniewski Funeral Home in Benson is assisting the family with arrangements.

Sadie Mathilda Philbrick was born at home near Salem, SD on February 17, 1923, to David and Hulda Anderson who had met on board the RMS Lusitania in 1913 while en route from Sweden to the United States. She was called from this life on Sunday, August 30, 2026 in Alexandria, MN.

The family moved to Minnesota when Sadie was one year old, eventually settling in the rural Kerkhoven, Murdock and Benson area. Sadie loved the outdoors, relishing driving the tractor for her father and helping milk the cows. She often reflected in later years that the opportunities and challenges of farm life helped equip her for her later work overseas.

Sadie came to know the grace of God in her life as a young teen, was moved to consider nursing, and graduated from Benson High School in 1941. She worked for a year in Minneapolis to save sufficiently to pay tuition at the Swedish Hospital School of Nursing and was graduated as a Registered Nurse in 1945. She had met Everett Philbrick in the Evangelical Free Church youth group in Benson during high school and maintained correspondence with him throughout World War II. Everett had joined the US Army following Pearl Harbor and was stationed in India. They both returned to Benson in the fall of 1945 and were married on December 1, 1945.

Sadie worked at Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago, IL, while Everett pursued seminary training. Upon completion in 1949, he pastored churches in Whipholt and Blackduck, MN, as he and Sadie welcomed two sons and prepared for service as missionaries to Pakistan, where they arrived in early 1954 and served until 1979, apart from returns to Minnesota for a season every five years. They lived in relatively remote, rural areas with limited amenities. Diligent and disciplined, Sadie learned to speak, read and write Urdu, adding in familiarity with a local dialect. She opened a clinic in their early years and was met with great medical need among the women and children. As the responsibilities of family increased with two additional sons and the loss of a young daughter, Sadie transitioned to providing medical care to those who came knocking on the door or resided in the villages which she and Everett served, rather than an announced dispensary. Her copy of the Merck Manual was well worn and the sound of the pressure cooker rattling as it sterilized syringes for injections was familiar.

Although Sadie and Everett had hoped to return to Pakistan for further service, that door closed in 1980. Everett returned to the pastorate in Littlefork, MN, and Sadie worked at the Littlefork Hospital until Everett retired and they moved back to Benson, MN, in 1985. The notion of retirement was foreign to Sadie who continued working as a nurse until she was 75 years old. Even then, she found fulfillment in volunteering in multiple different roles over the next 15-20 years. Some of these were readily observed, such as helping to transport nursing home patients to medical appointments, and others were out of sight, such as washing the back stairwell at Westwood Manor. When asked what helped her be a good nurse, she replied, “God first, and then the satisfaction of helping others.”

Well on in years, upon looking back, she said the events which most shaped her life did so “…because in each instance I needed God’s help.” She found great comfort in Isaiah 41:10 in her closing years as the limitations of age constricted the boundaries of her life.

Sadie is survived by her four sons: Timothy (Gloria), Jonathan (Karen), Kemuel (Elizabeth) and Jason; five grandchildren, Steven (Fernanda) and Tamara Philbrick; Ian (McGee), Anna (David Greenstreet), and Samuel Philbrick; and five great-grandchildren, Sophia, Ruth, Mary Joy, Logan, William and one yet to be born. Her husband, C. Everett, and daughter, Lois Elizabeth, as well as her sisters Violet and Lily, brother Lawrence, and two unnamed infant siblings preceded her in death.