Harriet Burns, 80, school nurse

Harriet Hillebrand Burns' decision to become a psychiatric nurse was swift.

"At her first taste of an autopsy" while a nursing student, her husband John E. Burns recalled, "she said, 'I'm going into psych nursing.' "

He suggested that in her career, "if she could be likened to a part of the body, she was a shoulder."

At a Veterans Administration medical center in Los Angeles in the late 1950s and early 1960s where she nursed, he said, "people could confide in her and seek her counsel."

On Sunday, April 5, Mrs. Burns, 80, of Cinnaminson, school nurse at St. Charles Borromeo parish there in the late 1970s and early 1980s, died of kidney failure at the Samaritan Hospice at Virtua Memorial Hospital in Mount Holly.

Mrs. Burns, known as "Bunnie," had several responsibilities in her parish.

She was an alto in the choir from 1970 to about two years ago, her husband said. She was a member of the art and environment committee, helping to decorate the church, from the 1970s into the 1990s.

She was a teacher of CCD religion classes in the early 1990s for those not attending a Catholic school.

And, since it began in the 2010s, she was a member of her parish's Women's Circle, a monthly gathering at which, her husband said, members "discuss women's issues and their faith, and their approach to how to enhance their faith."

Mrs. Burns, he said, "was a very nurturing, giving person."

Fran Cunneen, who taught religion classes with her, recalled how Mrs. Burns brought those traits to her CCD fourth graders.

After she learned that a Southern California earthquake had leveled a school from her past, she had the fourth graders organize a fund-raiser "to help the students at the school she'd remembered."

Born in Clifton, N.J., Mrs. Burns graduated from Benedictine Academy in Elizabeth, N.J., in 1953 and earned a nursing degree at Mount St. Mary's University in Los Angeles in 1957.

Her husband, who retired in 1970 as a bomber crew officer with the Strategic Air Command, said they met in April 1961, became engaged that May, and married that July. They settled in Cinnaminson in 1970.

Besides her husband of 53 years, she is survived by son John J.; daughters Tracie Galbraith, Leslie Patient, and Christie; and four grandchildren.

A visitation was set from 10 a.m., Saturday, April 11, at St. Charles Borromeo Church, 2500 Branch Pike, Cinnaminson, before an 11 a.m. memorial service there.

Donations may be sent to the Bachelor of Science in Nursing Program, Institutional Advancement, Mount St. Mary's University, 10 Chester Place, Los Angeles, Calif. 90007.

Condolences may be offered to the family at www.snovergivnish.com.

610-313-8134 @WNaedele