Sister Ann Keating, CSC (Sister M. Rose Angela)

Courtesy photo

+ Enlarge

Sister Ann Keating, CSC (Sister M. Rose Angela)

December 6, 1925 ~ July 11, 2019

Betty Ann Keating grew up in Sacramento, California always wanting to be a nurse like her mother, Vern Francis Keating, who had died when Betty was a child. Her father, William C. Keating, Sr., was a successful contractor. Betty moved out of their large home to attend Holy Rosary Academy, a girls’ boarding school of the Sisters of the Holy Cross. Betty entered the Sisters of the Holy Cross on July 13, 1943.

She trained as a student nurse, graduated from Saint Mary of the Wasatch College, Salt Lake City, with a Bachelor of Science in 1949, and was certified as a Registered Nurse at Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City. She returned to her baptismal name when customs changed after the Second Vatican Council. By 1969, as Sr. Ann Keating, she had earned a Master of Science from the University of Utah, also certifying as a nurse-midwife. In 1970, already an experienced head nurse and director of nursing service at Holy Cross hospitals in Salt Lake City and Fresno, Sr. Ann was asked to be on the faculty as an obstetrics instructor at Martin Luther King, Jr. Hospital in Watts until 1974. After three years back at St. Agnes Medical Center in Fresno, Sr. Ann’s expertise in midwifery education continued at Los Angeles County/University of Southern California Women’s Hospital (1974-1976), Loma Linda University in San Bernadino (1976-1977), the University of San Francisco (1977-1982), and San Francisco General Hospital (1982-1984).

She received the 1991 Woman of the Year Award granted by the Fresno, California Committee on the Status of Women (CSW).

Sr. Ann coordinated Women’s Health Services at Saint Agnes Medical Center, sponsored by the Sisters of the Holy Cross in Fresno. She also served on the board of directors for the Fresno Women’s Network.  She remained in Fresno until 2004, when she retired to Saint Catherine by the Sea, Ventura. There Sr. Ann pursued her interest in nurturing and became a master gardener in the civic community until 2017, when her ill health brought her to Saint Mary’s Convent, where she died.  She said of herself, “I might not have had a child of my own, but I was a mother of many.”

Sr. Ann died at Saint Mary’s Convent, Notre Dame, Indiana on July 11, 2019.