


Mary P. ‘Pat’ McCusker, registered nurse
Mary P. “Pat” McCusker, a retired registered nurse and volunteer, died Monday of complications from dementia at St. Joseph’s Nursing Home in Catonsville. The former longtime Pikesville resident was 95.
The former Mary Patricia Coughlin, the daughter of Joseph Coughlin, a city court clerk, and his wife, Loretta Hibbitts Coughlin, a Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. operator, was born in Baltimore and raised in Walbrook.
She was a 1942 graduate of the Institute of Notre Dame and earned her nursing degree in 1945 from the Mercy Hospital School of Nursing.
While she was attending nursing school, a classmate, Ann McCusker, had sent a photograph of some of her fellow nursing students to her brother Philip T. McCusker, who was stationed with the Army in Europe during World War II.
“Phil wrote back and asked if he could correspond with the second one from the left and the rest is history,” a daughter, Bridget McCusker of Hunting Ridge, wrote in a biographical sketch of her mother. Phil McCusker was discharged in 1945, and the couple married Aug, 31, 1946, her 22nd birthday.
After the youngest of her six children entered school in 1966, Mrs. McCusker returned to nursing in the recovery room at the old Baltimore County General Hospital in Randallstown, now Northwest Hospital, where she worked until retiring in 1985.
She volunteered for years taking blood pressures of those attending community health fairs.
A 68-year resident of Pikesville’s Church Lane, Mrs. McCusker moved to the nursing home two years ago.
She was a longtime active communicant and volunteer at St. Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church in Pikesville, where she was a member of the Sodality and Christian Mothers.
Mrs. McCusker enjoyed mall-walking with her husband, a Baltimore attorney and violinist
A visitation for Mrs. McCusker will be held at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at her church at 101 Church Lane, Pikesville. A Mass of Christian Burial will follow at 11 a.m.
In addition to her daughter, she is survived by two sons, Timothy McCusker of Catonsville and Terrence McCusker of Reisterstown; two other daughters, Sheila Suhrstedt of Ellicott City and Maureen McCusker of Canton; a sister, Mary McCormick of Chevy Chase; nine grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Another son, Philip T. McCusker Jr., died in 2016.
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