Obituary of Virginia M. Connery

Virginia passed away at home after a five-year battle with Pulmonary Fibrosis. She grew up in Watervliet, raised by the late Louis and Angeline Mastriano and her late beloved aunt Mary DePinto. She attended St. Bridget’s School and Vincentian Institute and earned her RN from St. Peter’s Hospital School of Nursing. She began her nursing career in the operating room at Leonard Hospital in Troy and worked for many years in the newborn nursery at St. Clare’s Hospital in Schenectady. Later, she provided private in-home care and assisted in oral surgery.

She married Richard Connery in 1960, and liked to say that she had three only children: Colleen, Timothy, and David. Work and life opportunities took them to Schenectady, Charlton, Liverpool, and Niskayuna, NY; then for five years to Lake County, Florida, before returning to Guilderland, NY, to be closer to family and friends.

She was most recently a congregant at St. Pius X in Loudonville, and had been very active in liturgy, music, and education with St. John the Baptist and St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish (formerly St. Helen’s & Our Lady of Fatima) in Schenectady.

Always Virginia to her family and Ginny to her friends, she loved cooking, baking, reading, dogs, birds, her gardens, music, and summers on Cape Cod. She was a prolific quilter and knitter. In the last several years, she knitted more than 200 prayer shawls for distribution to patients in hospice, nursing homes, and cancer care wards.

She is survived by her husband of 58 years, Richard; daughter, Colleen, of Oakland, Calif.; sons Timothy of Boston, Mass., and David (Lynn Wilkinson), of Shelburne, Vt.; grandchildren Alexander, Madeleine, and Ted; her sister Patricia (John); nieces Cara and Amy (Bob); great-nephews Nick, Joe, and Matthew; great-nieces Haleigh and Ella; many friends in New York, Cape Cod, Maryland, and Florida; and the Doberman she wished for but never had.

A Funeral Mass will be celebrated at St. Pius X in Loudonville, NY, Tuesday, May 15, 2018, at 11:30 a.m. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to St. Pius X, Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, or Community Hospice.