 | The text below this notice was generated by a computer, it still needs to be checked for errors and corrected. If you would like to help, view the original document by clicking the PDF scans along the right side of the page. Click the edit button at the top of this page (notepad and pencil icon) or press Alt+Shift+E to begin making changes. When you are done press "Save changes" at the bottom of the page. |
MURIEL AUBLE MIESSLER
1901—1994
Muriel Auble was born November 6, 1901, in Forest, Indiana, the fifth child of Sarah Emma Hattings and George Sears Auble. A primary school teacher, she
THE Bahá’í WORLD
Muriel Auble Mim/er
taught for over twenty years in Frankfort, Indiana.
Muriel was introduced to the Bahá’í Faith by Edmund Miessler.‘13 Edmund’s family had been taught the Faith by Dorothy Baker, and he had been an active Bahá’í since 1933. His first wife Elma passed away in 1934, leaving him with three children, Bob, Margot, and Carol. After Elma’s death, he took his children and pioneered to Columbus Grove, Ohio.
In 1943, after six months of sincere study, Muriel, a devoted Christian, accepted Bahá’u’lláh. She and Edmund wed in Columbus Grove in the first officially recognized Bahzi’l' marriage in the state. Together they served on the Louhelen (Davison) Bahá’x’ Summer School Committee and the Regional Teaching Committee for Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.
At the opening of the Guardian’s Second Seven Year Plan launched in
“3 See “In Memoriam," 7716’ Baird? \Vorld, vol. XVII, PP- 430—31.
[Page 181]
IN MEMORIAM 1992—1997 181
1946, Dorothy Baker, then member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States, encouraged the Miessler family to arise to pioneer in Latin America. Muriel and Edmund arrived in Brazil in October of 1946, and after a short stay in Rio de Janiero they helped form the first Local Assembly in Sao Paulo in 1947. Muriel served as its secretary.
Margot, who had recently finished high school, and her brother, Bob, joined them in 1947, and the Miesslers became the first Bahá’í pioneer family with children to leave the United States for Latin America. The youngest daughter, Carol, died in 1945 in a tragic auto accident while going to the Louhelen Bahá’í School. Muriel considered her to be the family’s “guardian angel.”
Muriel, often feeling inadequate for the tasks before her, rose to each challenge and was confirmed with assistance from on high. Pioneering in Brazil for nearly fifty years, she was dedicated to both teaching and administrative activities. In 1961 she was elected to the first National Assembly of Brazil, and she served it for more than twenty years, often as secretary of international correspondence. She participated in the election of the first Universal House of Justice, and she attended three more International Conventions in Haifa. She was present at the first World Congress in 1963 and made her only pilgrimage in 1984 at the age of eighty—three.
Her numerous traveling teaching trips included Argentina, Portugal, Madeira, and most of the states of Brazil. After the passing of her beloved husband, Edmund, in 1977, Muriel lived alone in the National Bahá’í Headquarters in Rio and continued with her teaching activities.
When she was no longer serving on the National Assembly, she wrote her book Pioneering in Brazil—Our Glorious Spiritual Adventure, published in English
in Brazil in 1986. Autobiographical, it is also a history of the Faith in that country.
In 1988 Muriel left her apartment on Avenida Paulista, where so much Bahá’í activity had taken place and where the first National Assembly of Brazil had been elected, and went to live with her daughter, Margot Malkin, in Bauru, a three—hour drive away. There she served on the Local Assembly until 1992 when she broke her hip. Her memory of this physical existence progressively released her from attachment to her surroundings, and she passed away on October 18, 1994. She was laid to rest in the local Bahá’í community vault that she helped to build in the Ctisto Rei Cemetery. Upon hearing of her death the Universal House of Justice wrote on October 20, 1994:
SADDENED NEWS PASSING MUCH LOVED MAIDSERVANT BAHA’U’LLAH MURIEL MIESSLER. HER NEARLY HALF CENTURY DEVOTED PIONEER SERVICES BRAZIL IN BOTH TEACHING AND ADMINISTRATIVE FIELDS UNFORGETTABLE. PRAYING FERVENTLY PROGRESS HER RADIANT SOUL WORLDS OF GOD. OUR HEARTFELT CONDOLENCES TO HER FAMILY AND MANY FRIENDS.
Margot]. Malkin
