Sr. Mary Elizabeth Hegarty, a lifelong educator who taught elementary and intermediate grades and concluded her career in the schools as a librarian, died of heart failure on May 26 at Resurrection Life Center in Chicago.

She was 94 and had been a professed member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame for 72 years.

Roseann Hegarty was born Aug. 28, 1917, in Chicago to Elizabeth Hoar and Dennis Hegarty.
She entered the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Milwaukee in August 1936. As a novice, she was given the religious name Mary Elizabeth, after her mother who had died seven months earlier. She made her first vows in July 1939.

Sr. Hegarty’s first teaching assignment, in 1939, was in the elementary grades at St. Anthony School in Detroit, where she stayed until 1951. She went on to teach in schools in Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois.

A Mass of Christian burial was held on June 1 at Divine Savior Catholic Church in Norridge, Ill. Burial was at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Alsip, Ill.

Sr. Hegarty is survived by many nieces and nephews.