School Sister of Notre Dame Sister Mary Christina Bryce, a grade school teacher who taught in schools in three states over five decades, died of congestive heart failure on July 20 at Maria Health Care Center in Baltimore, Md.
She was 89 years old and had been a professed member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame for more than 68 years.
Theresa Mary Bryce was born Aug. 15, 1922, in Lowell, Mass. She was raised by her foster mother, Catherine Chisholm, in Malden, Mass., and was taught by the School Sisters of Notre Dame from her earliest days in school. In 1940, she joined the congregation of the School Sisters of Notre Dame. As a novice, she was given the religious name Mary Christina, and she professed her first vows in August 1943.
Sister Christina is a 1956 graduate of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education.
Sister Christina’s first assignment was at St. Joseph School in Verona, Pa., (1943-44). She also taught first grade at St. Boniface in Philadelphia (1944-46), St. Thomas Aquinas in Baltimore (1946-54) and Mount Calvary in Forestville, Md. (1954-59) before being missioned to Florida, where she would serve in grade schools for most of the next 20 years.
Sister Christina continued her innovative work in learning resources after being assigned in 1981 to St. Peter the Apostle School in Philadelphia. She served first as a resource person for children in the school’s early grades and later made individualized instruction available to all grades. After several years as coordinator of the Learning Center, she became an instructor in computer education (1986-87) at St. Peter’s.
After a year in community service at Villa Assumpta, the former Baltimore Province motherhouse, Sister Christina returned to St. Peter’s in Philadelphia in 1988 and spent the next nine years before her retirement in 1997 in various roles.
In 1997 Sister Christina moved to Villa Assumpta in Baltimore, today home to retired sisters of the Atlantic-Midwest Province. She has lived at Maria Health Care Center, adjacent to Villa Assumpta, since 2005.
Her funeral Mass was celebrated July 25 at the Chapel at Villa Assumpta. Burial followed at Villa Maria Cemetery in Glen Arm, Md.
Sister Christina is survived by two nieces, Paula Leavitt of Stoneham, Mass., and Kathy Mabius of Reading, Mass.
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