Sister Mary Florian Heck, 90, educator, administrator
Sister Mary Florian Heck, 90, an educator and administrator at schools in the Philadelphia Archdiocese and other locations, died Wednesday, March 27, at McAuley Convent in Merion Station.
Sister Mary, the former Anna Sophia Heck, was born Oct. 24, 1922, in Philadelphia, one of three children of John and Eva Heck.
She attended grade school and graduated from high school at the Academy of the Sisters of Mercy at Broad Street and Columbia Avenue in 1941.
That year, she entered the Sisters of Mercy. She professed her vows in 1944.
During a long career in education, she taught at several schools in the Philadelphia Archdiocese, including St. Elizabeth in Fullerton (now Whitehall), where she was a principal and teacher.
Sister Mary specialized in teaching religion, a subject she taught at Archbishop Prendergast High School in Drexel Hill from 1962 to 1972. She taught religion at Walsingham Academy in Williamsburg, Va., from 1972 to 1976.
She then was a teacher and head of the religion department at Central Catholic in Allentown for 20 years. She served as principal for six of those years. Sister Mary also was a member of the Commission of Religious Women in the Allentown Diocese.
She returned to the Philadelphia area in 1996 to Waldron Mercy Academy, where she volunteered in the faculty workroom for nine years.
Sister Mary retired in 2005 to the McAuley Convent, where she engaged in the ministry of prayer.
She was an avid reader, said Sister Maureen Murray of the McAuley Convent.
Sister Maureen said Sister Mary "loved to travel with her good friend Sister Elizabeth Ann." They visited Ireland, the Lourdes shrine in France, and took trips to the theater in New York.
Sister Mary was preceded in death by two brothers, John F. Heck and Joseph C. Heck.
Services were held Monday, April 1, at the Convent of Mercy Chapel in Merion, with burial in the community cemetery.
Contributions in Sister Mary's memory may be sent to the Sisters of Mercy Mid-Atlantic Community, 515 Montgomery Ave., Merion, Pa. 19066
Contact Vernon Clark
at 215-854-5717 or vclark@phillynews.com.
