A memorial Mass for Sister Mary Angelita Terrio, FSM, will be celebrated at 1:30 p.m. Monday, June 26, 2017, in the chapel at The Sarah Community in Bridgeton. Sister Angelita died June 12 at The Sarah Community. A Franciscan Sister of Mary for more than 72 years, she was 87.
Born Adele Bernardine Terrio on August 2, 1929, in St. Charles, she entered the Sisters of St. Mary on August 4, 1944. She received the name Sr. Mary Angelita, and she professed final vows September 29, 1950. She completed a bachelor's in nursing from St. Louis University in 1954.
Sister Angelita loved nursing, especially caring for newborns and their mothers. She served as staff nurse and head nurse at St. Mary's Hospital in St. Louis until 1958, then taught at St. Louis University for a year. She was director of nursing at St. Mary's Hospital (1959-60) and at Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center (1960–1967). She then moved to St. Joseph's Hospital in St. Charles as head nurse of the newborn division and served in other roles before heading to St. Francis Hospital in Blue Island, Ill., as an emergency room nurse in 1974.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she was an OB nurse at St. Mary's in St. Louis and St. Elizabeth Hospital in Hannibal, Mo.; she also worked with the elderly at Smith Nursing Home and St. Francis Hospital in Marceline, Mo. After a year at Mary Queen and Mother skilled nursing facility in St. Louis, she served as nurse at Villa Marie skilled nursing facility in Jefferson City from 1982 to 1989. In 1989, she moved to hospice nursing, serving in South Carolina.
In 1996, she returned to the St. Louis area as a home health nurse for Arcadia Valley Hospital in Pilot Knob. In 1998 she returned to Villa Marie in Jefferson City, providing pastoral care until retiring in September 2009. She volunteered at Villa Marie until moving to The Sarah Community in May 2010.
Sister Angelita is survived by her sister-in-law, Donna Terrio of O'Fallon.