IN MEMORIAM
Sister Regina Marie Bevelacqua Sister Regina Marie Bevelacqua shared her conviction and passion for our “special brothers and sisters” in a January 4, 1968 column in The Record newspaper, in which she wrote: “There are little saints among us that go unrecognized. It is not the exterior that makes a saint but the beauty that lies within. I am speaking of our brothers and sisters [with intellectutal disabillities] who never grow up but will remain as Christ commanded us, ‘Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of Heaven.’” Her challenge to us: “I challenge you to learn one such child and you will be shown that what lies within the child is the great mark of a true Christian—LOVE!” Ursuline Sister Regina Marie Bevelacqua died on April 7, 2021, at Nazareth Home-Newburg. She was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, to the late Battista Bevelacqua and Minnie Agnesti Bevelacqua, on May 24, 1935, and named Mary Virginia. Sister Regina devoted her life to persons with intellectual disabilities. When asked, she said this special call came when she was in the eighth grade. One day she saw Donnie, one of the six-year-olds, thrown out of his class. Then she saw that he was not picked up by the school bus. She questioned why, only to be told: “He is handicapped.” She responded by working with him, and thus began her life’s mission. Mary Virginia left Donnie in 1955 to join the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville. In 1965 she began teaching special education classes in the Archdiocese of Louisville. For more than 20 years, she served as principal of the Monsignor Pitt Learning Center, which later became the Ursuline-Pitt School. She also taught for one year at the Ursuline Child Development Center. Concerned that development opportunities for adults with intellectual disabilities were scarce, Sister
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Regina directed the Harvest Home for women from 1986 to 1998. In 1993, she and Ms. Mary Jo Payne co-founded St. Mary’s Center in Middletown. Calling the two “Diminutive Superheroes on behalf of special people,” Bellarmine University named them to the Gallery of Distinguished Graduates in 2019. Sister Regina served as the executive director of St. Mary’s Center until 2020. Prior to her work with those with intellectual disabilities, she was a teacher at St. Peter, St. Ann, St. Joseph and St. Boniface schools in Louisville, and at St. Joseph School in Columbia, South Carolina. She was a Special Olympics coach for more than 50 years and played a role in the development of the first Special Olympics games in Chicago in 1968. Sister Regina Marie was selected as a Community Hero torchbearer for the 1996 Olympic Torch Relay, carrying the Olympic Flame along Spring Street in New Albany, Indiana, and handing it on to the next U.S.A. runner. Sister also received a WLKY Bell Award in 2018. Sister Regina is survived by several nieces and nephews, her close friends, Mary Jo Payne, OSU-A, and Mary Ann Daunhauer, OSU-A, as well as her community of Ursuline Sisters and Associates.
May the strength and true consolation of the Holy Spirit be in you all, so that you can sustain and carry out vigorously and faithfully the charge laid upon you. — Saint Angela Merici Prologue to the Counsels