Mary Eleanor Macsherry, a former nurse and family matriarch known for boisterous Sunday suppers, died of heart failure on March 8 while being taken to Greater Baltimore Medical Center. She was 92 and lived in the Tuxedo Park section of North Baltimore.

Born in Baltimore and raised in Tuscany-Canterbury and Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of Edward Snowden Warfield, an agricultural salesman and Betty Byrd Chaney, a homemaker. She was a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, worked in Union Memorial Hospital’s emergency room and was a visiting public health nurse for the Baltimore City Health Department.

She met her husband Clinton Kilty Macsherry Jr., a safety engineer for the old U.S. Fidelity and Guaranty Co., through mutual friends and was married in 1958. They went on to have eight children.

“She became notable for her mastery of home economics, for piloting a succession of Volkswagen mini-buses into the ground and for her symphonic orchestration of family meals,” said her son, Clinton Macsherry. “She was an early adopter of recycling and purchasing provisions to feed her brood through a food cooperative.”

Her son also described his mother as “deeply devout and indefatigably charitable.” Mrs. Macsherry opened her home to members of her extended faith community in times of need.

“She was a convert to Roman Catholicism after her marriage and was devoted to the Blessed Mother and found particular resonance in the teachings and traditions of St. Francis Of Assisi,” her son said.

Mrs. Macsherry, who lived in Tuxedo Park, enjoyed sitting in the sunshine and greeting friends both old and newly met from the front porch of her home which was filled with potted plants and annuals.

Her daughter, Kathleen Goldberg said, “She loved life and the people in hers unreservedly — ladybugs and rascals alike.”

A funeral Mass was celebrated by her son Fr. Hugh Macsherry, a Franciscan Friar, on March 13 at the Cathedral of Mary of Our Queen, where she was a parishioner for many decades.

Survivors include her four sons, Clinton Macsherry of Ocean City, Edward Macsherry of Towson and Andrew Macsherry, of Baltimore and Friar Hugh Macsherry, O.F.M., of Durham, North Carolina; three daughters, Eleanor Weaver, of Spotsylvania, Virginia, Anastasia Scherr, of Pikesville and Kathleen Goldberg, of St. Simon’s Island, Georgia; 14 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. A son, Geoffrey Macsherry, died in 2016. Her husband of 58 years also died in 2016.

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