Birth: February 13, 1916 Profession: February 11, 1973
Death: November 17, 2006
Sister Mary Lou Warner, a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother who was also a Religious of the Sacred Heart and a longtime teacher in San Francisco and Atherton, California, and Seattle died Friday, November 17, 2006, at Oakwood Convent of the Sacred Heart. She was 90. Oakwood is the retirement center for the Religious of the Sacred Heart in Atherton. As a young widow Sister Warner raised her sons while working with the Sisters of Nazareth in San Diego for 20 years. She converted to Catholicism and, at age 49, earned her bachelor’s degree in history at San Diego College for Women, a forerunner of the University of San Diego operated by the Religious of the Sacred Heart. She entered the Society of the Sacred Heart the same year and began three decades of teaching. She taught religion, math and English at Stuart Hall for Boys in San Francisco from 1961 to 1970 and at Convent of the Sacred Heart Elementary School from 1973 to 1982. In the intervening years, she earned a master’s degree in theology at the University of San Francisco and, from 1971 to 1972, taught at Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Seattle. From 1981 to 1992, she taught math and Latin to students at St. Joseph’s Elementary School, a Sacred Heart school in Atherton, California. Sister Warner developed many hobbies, becoming an award winning professional wedding cake decorator and quilt maker. All of her work was lovingly done to perfection. Even in her retirement at Oakwood she made quilts, as well as teaching students how to crochet. She was 90 when she died and had been a Religious of the Sacred Heart for 39 years. She had donated her body to the Stanford University medical school. Sister Warner is survived by a sister, Katherine Stafford of Ogilvie, Minnesota, two sons, Howard and Robert Truss, 17 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. (A third son, James Warner is deceased.) A funeral Mass will be celebrated at Oakwood, 140 Valparaiso Ave., Atherton, California. The date is pending. Memorial contributions may be made to the Society of the Sacred Heart, 4100 Forest Park Avenue, Suite A, St. Louis, MO, 63108.