From Katherine’s funeral mass at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church in Yardley, PA on August 12, 2025. Katherine’s obituary is available here.
Good Morning! I am Katherine’s youngest daughter, Mary. Thank you all for coming to celebrate mom’s beautiful life today and for so many calls, texts, emails, and other memories shared in all forms. We were very blessed to have mom for 95 years and know that she is enjoying the heavenly banquet with so many who have gone before her including as she would call them, her “Mother & Daddy,” her sister Marie, and dear friends, Madge and Gen. I know she would be happy to see us “all of us being together” today — and especially, in church!
Mom had humble beginnings growing up in the West Oak lane neighborhood of Philadelphia. Her parents instilled in her a strong Catholic faith, a frugal discipline and modest living habits. She fondly remembers summer trips to Ocean City, NJ when they would spend 2 weeks together with her extended family. In a car, packed to the gills, she and Marie would sit on top of the linens and keep watch on the baskets of vegetables on the back. She developed a lifelong love of the beauty of the ocean and the shore.
Growing up she loved the time that the family would gather after dinner to sing songs together while her dad played the piano. Those childhood Sunday evening dinners became the pre-cursor to our monthly “1st Sunday” dinners that continue to this day.
Mom loved to sing — whether she knew or remembered the words or not— she would sing the melody and add la da da da when she didn’t know or have the words. Later in life when her eyesight was failing, she would sing all the hymns at mass that way. When she had to be immobilized for 6 weeks after her surgery, I arrived at the nursing home to find mom in the common area entertaining one of her fellow patients singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
Mom fully appreciated joy in her life, she loved to laugh and her laugh was absolutely infectious. Her smile lit up the room. Old friends from Fox Chase told me they remember hearing mom’s laugh from around the corner. For those of us that were on the stage, you always knew exactly where mom was sitting in the audience — not only did she laugh at every punchline with gusto…but also her laugh was so unique AND so full of joy, you couldn’t help but laugh too. Mom had a couple of favorite jokes — maybe you have heard her tell them?….There is one about a gravedigger that digs the grave too deep and he can’t get out. When night falls, a drunk comes walking through the cemetery and the gravedigger calls out, “Hey up there, help! I can’t get out and I’m cold” and the drunk replies, “no wonder you’re cold, you don’t have any dirt on you….” and she would shuffle her foot across the floor like she was pushing dirt into the hole. But the real treasure of mom’s joke-telling was that most times, she couldn’t make it to the punchline. She would start laughing mid-way through…so much so that she couldn’t speak….and then she’d laugh more because she couldn’t finish the joke and then everyone around her would start laughing and soon the whole room was enjoying an immense belly laugh even without the punchline.
Mom was the epitome of grateful for what – and more importantly — WHO she had in her life. Her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren were her greatest joy. She would say often, “We are very fortunate” and she meant it to her core. Her legacy is all around us in all of you.
Mom appreciated the simplest acts of kindness with such genuine gratitude. She appreciated having learned how to budget and manage her money — and saying she was frugal is an understatement. I remember dinners growing up when we would have a “smorgasbord” — mom’s euphemistic name for “leftovers” — The stove was covered with all these little Corning ware dishes with the little blue flowers on them —I think they were 4” x 4” ….some of which might have had only 3 peas in them but she was adamant that she would not waste a thing! Another time, when she was the “Girl Scout Cookie Mom” — meaning we had a basement full of Girl Scout cookies – and we had a flood in the basement. The water damaged many of the boxes but not necessarily the cookies inside. Mom dutifully purchased the cookies in the damaged boxes and announced that we would not buy any other cookies until these were finished. Due to the way the cases of cookies were stacked, it happened that most of the damage affected the “Scot Teas” — and I think she was putting full sleeves of Scot Teas in our school lunches for almost a year after the flood.
Mom was a lady through and through. She always had to put on her fuscia red lipstick whenever she went out whether she was going to church or the grocery store. And she had 3 types of stockings — those that you can wear to church, those that you can wear to the grocery store and those that you wear to clean the house!
Mom loved purely but with an innocence and a passion that is unmatched — always ready to offer help when she saw a need….like the time that she asked her triple-X size friend if she had an extra coat because her daughter was pregnant with twins and couldn’t close her coat…..or when she applied for a job at Magic Cottage — the local daycare when my youngest, Owen, was born. When Fran, the Director, said she didn’t have any openings at the Morrisville location but she could work at another one, mom responded saying, “Oh I don’t want to take care of anyone else, I just want to take care of Owen.”
Mom was the epitome of hospitality in all forms…she loved to entertain and she would host large dinners for family and friends and honestly, she would fret about the dinners because they “had to be nice.” Sometimes she would set the table a week or more before the event and throw a sheet over the table to keep the dishes from getting dusty. Ron teased that she probably had the roast under there…
Many who knew mom as children said she always made them feel welcome, that she was always so kind and listened to them with genuine interest. Mom was the Aunt that asked questions AND she listened to the answers! Mom was great at any gathering whether she was hosting or not — always making sure that people felt welcome — like the time at our Christmas party when she introduced my sister-in-law, Janine, to her own sister. Mom was great to have at parties but even more so at funerals because of her keen ability to offer her love, kindness and compassion even to those that she might not know very well.
Mom lived her faith humbly and selflessly. I can think of no better example of bringing the light of Christ to those she met — to friends and family old and new….welcoming the stranger, caring for those who mourn and doing small things with Great Love. She personified St. Francis instruction, “Preach the Gospel at all times, use words if necessary.”
Many years ago she learned about a young family who lost their son, an unrelated Dan McSorley, in a car accident. The boy was about 7 years old like my own brother, Dan. Mom reached out to express her sympathies and offer her prayers and support for the family. More than 30 years later, we encountered the father of the boy by happenstance. He told us about the letter from mom and how much it meant to him and his family. He remembered the stranger who took the extra effort to reach out so many years before during their darkest hours. In another case, a dear friend recalled how in the middle of a terrible fight between her parents when her mother was seriously hurt and needed to go to the ER, Mom seemed to suddenly appear — ready to help. Mom calmed the children, assured them that the dear Lord would take care of things, said their bedtime prayers and sat with them until they went to sleep…. “She added, I felt so safe and loved that night. Your mom truly showed me that when all seems hopeless and horrible, God is listening even when I was so upset and couldn’t put it into words.
In a few minutes, we will commend mom to the arms of our loving Father. Sleep with the angels, Mom, you are home now.