Sister Mary Eileen O'Connor

Sister of Christian Charity Mary Eileen O’Connor, who dedicated 75 years of her life as a professed woman religious, died April 14 at Sacred Heart Convent, Wilmette, Illinois. She was 101.

Born Mary Catherine O’Connor in Chicago on July 28, 1918, Sister Mary Eileen entered the convent at age 15, becoming a novice and assuming her religious name on Aug. 21, 1936. She made her first vows on Aug. 21, 1938, and her perpetual profession on Aug. 20, 1944.

Sister Mary Eileen’s first assignment was as a grade schoolteacher at St. Henry School in New Orleans, where she worked as a first-grade teacher from 1938-55.

Subsequent assignments would take her to Illinois and Minnesota, but Sister Mary Eileen returned to Louisiana in 1959, spending one year teaching at St. Mary Magdalen School in Metairie and nine years teaching seventh and eighth graders at St. Raphael School in New Orleans.

After a year in Minnesota, Sister Mary Eileen returned to New Orleans in 1970 as an eighth-grade teacher at Immaculate Heart of Mary and to care for her aging parents for six years.\

In 1984, she moved to the motherhouse in Wilmette, teaching math at Mallinckrodt College, tutoring high school students and teaching CCD at two parishes.

A wake took place at Sacred Heart Convent on April 16, and a Funeral Mass was held in the convent chapel the following day. Burial was in the Sisters’ cemetery in Wilmette.

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