Age 95
Inspired by her motto, “My Jesus, I thank you,” Sister Elizabeth served people in need in schools, shelters, food banks and hospitals.
At the age of 26, Elizabeth entered the Sisters of Mercy in Watchung, New Jersey. Prior to her entrance, during World War II, she and her classmates would leave school and go to a sewing factory to make uniforms for American soldiers. Later, she worked for Bell Telephone as a telephone operator serving the switchboards for Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base, both in New Jersey.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Georgian Court College (now University) in Lakewood, New Jersey. She taught elementary school for 16 years in the Metuchen, Camden, and Trenton dioceses. Next, she co-founded Laurel House, a group home for troubled teenaged girls in Trenton, New Jersey. After the facility closed when it lost its funding, she reopened it as Francis House of Prayer, serving as its director for 12 years.
While there, she enrolled in classes at the Jesuit Retreat Center of Spiritual Growth in Wernersville, Pennsylvania, and received certification in spiritual direction and retreat work. She served for 35 years as a visiting retreat director at the Wernersville center. In addition to her retreat work, Sister Elizabeth served the poor, the homeless, and the deinstitutionalized at Mercy Center in Asbury Park and served 10 years as chaplain at the cancer unit in Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, New Jersey. She spent her final years at McAuley Hall Health Care Center in Watchung, New Jersey, in the community that she loved.