Lucille Clara Fanning

Lucille Clara Fanning (nee Bodensteiner), age 98, formerly of Floral Park, NY, died peacefully June 26 at her residence in Baltimore, MD, following a long, thoroughly engaged life.

Through the 1960s and ’70s, Lucille was a substitute teacher on Long Island in the five Sewanhaka district high schools serving Floral Park and the surrounding villages. Earlier, after graduating in 1939 from Clarke College (now Clarke University) in Dubuque, Iowa, Lucille taught high-school students for two years at  the Immaculate Conception school on the Crow Creek Sioux reservation in Stephan, South Dakota.

As a high school substitute teacher, Lucille could roll with the pranks and give as good as she got. “Now, how many of you know who Lee Harvey Oswald actually was?” Lucille once asked her class for the day, seizing a teaching moment and turning the tables on a cliché attendance-sheet entry. “My husband was on the same ship, the SS Maasdam, that Oswald sailed across the Atlantic in 1962 when he returned from Russia,” she told her class (a true fact). “And now he’s writing a book, At Sea With Oswald,” she continued earnestly (a complete farce). Several months later, Lucille was startled when a student stopped her in the hall to ask sincerely, “How’s your husband’s book about Oswald coming along?” 

Lucille was born January 8, 1917, and raised on a farm in northeastern Iowa, near Ossian. Her broad education encompassed extensive practical training on the farm and through her local 4H Club.

In 1941, Lucille married Samuel J. Fanning, who emigrated from Tipperary, Ireland, in 1930. He later credited Lucille with earning much of the bachelor’s degree he received from the University of Chicago and the history master’s degree and PhD he received from the University of California at Berkeley during their first decade of marriage. At night, as their children slept, Lucille typed and corrected Samuel’s stacks of handwritten class notes and dissertation drafts, while he worked shifts in Chicago steel mills and later in the Berkeley post office.

Lucille applied her many practical skills tirelessly and selflessly while raising her family. Prolific as a chef, seamstress, curtain-maker, and furniture re-upholsterer, she kept her large family fed, dressed, and comforted a good measure above what their modest means might suggest. Lucille and her husband also tended diligently to the academic and cultural development of their eight children, providing them with college educations, private music lessons, various cultural outings, and a full sabbatical year living in Ireland.

Lucille made homes with her husband in Chicago in 1941; Berkeley in 1944; Fairfax, VA and Washington, DC in 1951; and Floral Park, NY, in 1964. Several years after her husband’s death in 1988, Lucille moved to Cardinal Shehan Center in Baltimore, MD, a retirement residence run by the Sisters of Mercy, the order of Lucille’s eldest daughter, Sr. Mary Fanning. Throughout her 22-year residence there, Lucille volunteered extensively to assist the facility and her fellow residents.

Devotion to her Catholic faith was central to Lucille’s life. She drew from her faith the strength and perseverance to work so tirelessly and selflessly for her family and others, often under trying circumstances.

Dr. Raymond J. Sontag, a longtime friend and onetime PhD mentor of Samuel Fanning, once observed of Lucille: “Never has one person done so much for so many with so little for so long.”

Lucille is survived by her three sons, Samuel M. of Gaithersburg, MD, Patrick of Olympia, WA, and Adrian of Long Island, NY; her five daughters, Sr. Mary Fanning of Baltimore, MD, and Kathleen Bruen, Deirdre Ramondino, Martha Pesak, and Rosemary Bunzel of Long Island, NY; three of her ten siblings, Fr. Peter Bodensteiner of Lawler, IA, Olivia Everett of Fayette, IA, and Dr. Cletus Bodensteiner of Long Beach, CA; her seven sons- and daughters-in-law; her 22 grandchildren; and, yes, her 22 great-grandchildren.

A visitation will be held 1:30 pm Tuesday, June 30, at Stella Maris, 2300 Dulaney Valley Road, Timonium, MD 21093 (410-252-4500), followed immediately by a 2:00 pm funeral mass at the Stella Maris chapel. A reception will follow the mass. Burial will be Thursday, July 2, at Holy Rood Cemetery, 111 Old Country Rd, Westbury, NY 11590 (516-334-7990). A reception will follow the burial service.