S. Rita Fitterer OSB, age 88, died Friday, February 20, 2009 in the Monastery Care Center Sacred Heart Monastery, Yankton SD.
A wake service will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 22, and the Funeral Mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m. on Monday, February 23, 2009 in Bishop Marty Memorial Chapel, Yankton. Burial will be in the monastery cemetery. Wintz & Ray Funeral Home, Yankton, is in charge of arrangements.
Rose Fitterer was born January 7, 1921 to Marcus and Katherine (Ehrmantraut) Fitterer on the family farm near Almont, North Dakota. She was the oldest of sixteen children. The family home burned down when she was only five weeks old. She attended country school through the eighth grade. The financial difficulties of the depression prevented her from attending high school. At the age of nine she had a desire to be a religious sister, but her father said she was too young and should wait several years while helping out with the farm work. In January of 1942 she was finally able to enter Sacred Heart Monastery. She became a novice in June, 1943 receiving the name, Rita. She made her first profession in 1944 and final profession in 1948. Her ministry included many years in food service at schools in Fort Yates, ND, York, NE, Stephan and Tabor, SD, Mount Marty College, at hospitals in Parkston and Tyndall, SD and Lincoln, NE, at Bishop's residences in Bismarck, ND and Sioux Falls, SD, and in the kitchen and the infirmary kitchen at the monastery. S. Rita was a very soft spoken woman with a dry sense of humor who enjoyed gardening and growing plants. She also enjoyed riding a horse when the monastery activity director would bring her horses for the sisters to ride and pet.
S. Rita is survived by her Benedictine community; seven sisters: Minnie Krause, Elizabeth Reisenaur, Regina Samek, Florence Dougherty, Eva Wheeler, Marian Staton and Magdeline Felton; and three brothers: Alphonse, Sylvester, and Mark.
She was preceded in death by her parents, two sisters: Katherine Heck and S. Damian Fitterer OSB, and two siblings in infancy.
