Sister Linda Marie Hellebusch, SSND

Sister Linda Marie Hellebusch, SSND, a School Sister of Notre Dame who spent more than seven decades in religious life caring for the sick, the elderly and the very young across the St. Louis area and beyond, died on November 11, 2026, at the age of 88.

Born Clara L. Hellebusch on January 9, 1938, in Peers, Missouri, she entered the School Sisters of Notre Dame in 1953, making her first profession of vows in 1955 and her final profession in 1961. She took the religious name Linda Marie and spent the rest of her life as a vowed member of the congregation, known within her community as a woman who tried to bring cheerfulness to every day.

Her ministry was defined less by a single career than by a long and varied record of hands-on service. She worked as a homemaker at Madonna Manor in Marrero, Louisiana, in the 1950s, then returned to the St. Louis area, where she spent decades as a nursing aide, food service worker and maintenance staff member at Sancta Maria in Ripa and Villa Gesu. In the late 1980s and 1990s she turned to child care, working at an infant and toddler center, at a business she ran called Linda's Baby Care, and later at Professor Bear's Learning Center and a KinderCare location in St. Louis. She returned to nursing work in the 2000s as a night aide in the infirmary at Sancta Maria in Ripa, before spending her final years in ministries of prayer, presence and volunteer service at the SSND Residence, the Theresa Center and Mother of Perpetual Help in St. Louis.

Sister Linda Marie's long service was formally recognized in 2025, when she was honored as a 70 year jubilarian by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, marking seven decades since her first profession of vows. The School Sisters of Notre Dame are an international congregation of Catholic women religious founded in Bavaria in the 19th century and long associated with education, health care and social service work in the St. Louis archdiocese and around the world.

She passed away peacefully on November 11, 2026. No cause of death has been made public. She was preceded in death by her parents, Joseph and Martha Hellebusch, and by six brothers. She is survived by three sisters, a sister in law, and many nieces, nephews, friends, and her Sisters in the religious community and SSND Associates. Her death was announced through an obituary published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and through the Kutis Funeral Home of St. Louis, which is handling her arrangements.