Dance was a big part of Sister Eggleston's life
Story courtesy of The Bordeaux Chronicle

Before she came to religious life in her early 40s, Gertrude Eggleston owned and operated a dance school — Gert rude's Studio of Dancing — in her hometown of Philadelphia for 25 years. Specializing in tap and soft shoe dancing, Eggleston had a group, "The Peanuts," she recruited from a home for boys in Rockaway Beach, N.Y., that she taught to dance and perform.

But as happens with many adults seeking something more fulfilling, Eggleston turned to the Congregation of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate— the Marianist Sisters — and a second vocation that was far different from her previous life. Eggleston, who spent 50 years as a Marianist Sister, died on Monday at the McCullough Hall Nursing Center. She was 95.

She was 42 when she took her vows in 1956 after making her novitiate in France, where the order was founded in 1816.

Sister Rose Marie (Gertrude) Eggleston
* Born: Feb. 13, 1911, in Philadelphia
* Died: Jan. 15, 2007, in San Antonio
* Survived by: An only child, she leaves no immediate family.
* Services: A rosary will be recited at 7 p.m. Friday at Roy Akers-Zizik

Kearns Funeral Chapels at 515 N. Main Ave.; the funeral Mass will be at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Marianist Residence Chapel at 520 Fordham Lane on the campus of St. Mary's University, with interment in the Marianist Cemetery, also on the university campus.

Now known as Sister Rose Marie Eggleston, she was sent to Somerset to teach preschoolers at St. Ann's School. From St. Ann's, she moved to St. James School in San Antonio, where she taught first grade for three years.

" She was a wonderful dancer and she taught kindergarten, gymnastics and tap," said Sister Eileen Cehyra, director of Our Lady of the Pillar Community, home to the small congregation in San Antonio. Teaching wasn't all Eggleston did. She was co-director of Dougherty Hall, the first residence hall for women at St. Mary's University and now a coed facility for first-year students; worked at Our Lady of the Pillar Renewal Center in San Antonio and at the Marianist infirmary in Cupertino, Calif. For a while she was in charge of the province's archives in San Antonio, working at that until her health began failing, Cehyra said. Even though the dance school had been part of another life, Eggleston never gave up dancing.

" Even when she couldn't stand up and dance, she would sit down and tap dance," Cehyra said. "She loved to dance."