Mary Fredlund took after famous aunt

Mary Fredlund of Apple Valley, a nurse and a niece of Sister Elizabeth Kenny, died Saturday in Apple Valley. She was 95.

Fredlund, who grew up on a farm in Queensland, Australia, came to Minneapolis in 1946 to work at Kenny Institutes here and later in New Jersey.

"Wounded World War I Australian troops and her aunt inspired her to become a nurse," said her son, Roger, of Apple Valley. "She was skilled in the Kenny method of helping polio victims," before she became a registered nurse.

Like her famous aunt, Fredlund, too, was a nurse in the Australian bush.

Kenny pioneered a rehabilitation treatment for polio victims nearly 100 years ago, and had clinics in many nations. In Minneapolis, the Sister Kenny Institute of Rehabilitation is part of Abbott Northwestern Hospitals-Allina.

Before Sister Kenny was a household name in the United States, she was well known in places such as Australia, Ireland and England. (Sister is a title for nurses in British Commonwealth nations.)

In the 1930s, Fredlund became a Kenny technician, trained in what was a precursor to physical therapy. She also became a registered nurse, studying in Brisbane.

Fredlund, then Mary Farquharson, and Kenny were invited to Buckingham Palace, meeting King George VI and the royal family at a garden party.

After a bit of touring, Fredlund worked for two years in a London hospital until the outbreak of World War II.

Back in Australia, Fredlund served as a nurse in the bush country, and was proud of delivering 10 babies, said her son.

In 1946 Sister Kenny called her to Minneapolis to help at the new Kenny facility.

Margaret Ernest of Minneapolis is a former personal secretary of Kenny's.

In the late 1940s, she married Roger Fredlund and became a St. Louis Park homemaker. When a polio epidemic struck the Twin Cities in the early 1950s, she returned to voluntary service at the Minneapolis institute for a few years.

Wade Alexander of Hot Springs Village, Ark., author of "Sister Elizabeth Kenny, Maverick Heroine of the Polio Treatment Controversy," interviewed Fredlund for his book.

"She provided interesting insights about Elizabeth Kenny," said Alexander, adding that Fredlund supervised the translation of a documentary film about Kenny into six languages.

According to her family, Fredlund is the last surviving relative of Kenny in the United States.

Fredlund's husband of 54 years, Walter, died in 2002.