In Loving Memory...

Sister Mary Camilla Fitzgerald, CSC
(Sister M. Joseph Gertrude)
Birth: April 20, 1932
Profession: August 15, 1953
Death: January 31, 2007

“Let the little children come to me.”

Camilla’s grace and blessing be with all of us! What irony that she has gone home to God on the birthday of her dear friend, Sister Mary Ellen, at whose bedside she sat vigil for so many weeks after the terrible accident on Route 50, which eventually claimed the life of beloved Sister Alice Teresa so many years ago. 

We celebrate that she is free at last from what her doctor described as the “rotten disease” of rheumatoid arthritis, which eroded her body but never her spirit. Camilla, our sister, our cousin, our friend and inspiration, is free at last. How she loved people—family, friends, students, children and pets. How she loved life—the wonder of the sunrise over the ocean, the delight of a Maryland blue crab (always approached with the care and skill of a neurosurgeon lest even a morsel be lost). But especially how she loved her students throughout her life and most recently at Holy Cross Hospital. They streamed into her room on that last day to tell her of their love, to give her their thanks, and as they prayed with their deep faith, they gave comfort not only to Camilla but to all of us who were keeping vigil with her. They, like so many of us, have experienced the tender compassionate listening and practical help of this gentle, empathetic, courageous woman. She graced us with her wisdom, her wit, her unconditional, nonjudgmental acceptance. She also drove some of us crazy with her stubbornness and independence, which kept her mobile to the end, even as it frustrated our needs to be of some assistance. She actually worked and cooked dinner the night that this mercifully brief illness struck with such unforgiving vengeance. The medicines that, as she said, “gave her 20 good years,” had ravaged her liver, which finally gave out. She has been blessed by what most of us so desire—“to die with her boots on.”

The only child of Gertrude and Joseph Fitzgerald, who deferred their own marriage in order to support their large Marsden and Fitzgerald families, Camilla was born prematurely. Her life was saved by her father’s vein-to-vein blood transfusion—considered a miraculous beginning to all of us who work in healthcare. Her mother dressed her in blue for her first seven years in gratitude to the Blessed Mother for giving her a healthy child. Not blessed with siblings but with many wonderful cousins, she always told us that her growing up years more than compensated for any pain and suffering she endured during most of her adult life. Only a couple of Sundays ago, our Tamarack community was planning her 75th—delighted that this woman who would never allow anyone to fuss over her was enthusiastically consenting to a celebration.

Camilla spent the first 20 years of ministry in elementary schools from New York to Raleigh and had wonderfully warm and funny stories to regale us with from those years. She was a pioneer as an elementary school counselor and served the next 20 years in various public schools in Montgomery County. During that time she also ministered to her mother in her declining years with the steady support of many of her sisters, but most especially her dear Sister Agnes Louise. Camilla would want to publicly thank Sister Miriam Andre, our Eastern regional superior at that time, who negotiated permission for her to live in an efficiency in her mother’s apartment building years before this kind of exception to living in community was allowed.

After she “retired” Camilla was called to leadership by the sisters in Area IV and became a trusted confidante of many in difficult times and transitions. In her spare time during those years she worked as needed in patient registration at Holy Cross, spent Wednesday evenings answering the phone and doorbell at Saint Angela Hall, volunteered at Head Start and the Children’s Defense League, frequently served as “hostess with the mostest” to our extended local community at Georgian Woods, and always tried actively to support her cousin Dede (Sister Ellen Dolores “Long Haul” Lynch) in her tireless efforts for peace and justice at the Quixote Center.

And finally, during these last eight years she came to Holy Cross Hospital, teaming with her close friend, Sister Mary Virginia Herr, who had pioneered the ESL program for employees, knowing so well that some proficiency in English is a prerequisite for our “working poor” employees to move to a better life and a fuller use of their many gifts and rich potential. Camilla became not only their teacher but their confidante, their fiercest advocate, their witness to their own stories of unbelievable courage, suffering and determination to try to make a better life for their children and families. She became their abuela, their much-loved grandmother.

And now our good God has taken this fragile “earthenware treasure” home—to her beloved parents, family, friends and to our little Kelpie pup that she will finally be able to pick up and hold.

We love you and we will miss you, Camilla. Bless us with your spirit and love.

Written by Sister Rachel Anne Callahan, CSC

Memorial contributions may be made to the Sisters of the Holy Cross Ministry With the Poor Fund, Saint Mary’s, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556.