Sister Mary Felix McKenna Dies at Age 89

Community members and friends of Sister Mary Felix McKenna mourn her passing today.

For 75 years, Sister Mary Felix has served the communities where she lived. She was very well loved in the Peekskill-Cortlandt community and even served as the fourth Grand Marshal of the Peekskill’s St. Patrick’s Parade in 1993.

“She was absolutely selfless,” said Jack Murphy, Chairman of the St. Patrick’s Parade. “She was a wonderful lady, a classic Irish nun. She had a great faith that God would always take care of her.”  

In the 1960s Sister Mary Felix served at Graymoor in Garrison. In the 1970s she moved on to St. Cecilia’s parish in East Harlem and she later returned to Garymoor, where she was devoted to visiting the sick at the Hudson Valley Hospital Center and at nursing homes and senior care facilities in the area, according to Catholic New York.

Murphy remembers stories about Sister Mary Felix at the hospital.

“She would be at the hospital until late in the evening with no way of getting home. So he would just sit in the hallway and sooner or later a nurse would get off a shift and offer a ride and she’d say ‘I knew God would take care of me,’” Murphy said.

Sister Mary Felix was born in Manorhamilton, County Leitrim, Ireland on March 16, 1923.  She died peacefully at the residence of St. Francis Convent at Graymoor on Aug. 2, 2012.