School Sister of Notre Dame Agnes Barbara Hettel (formerly Sister Mary Wilbert), a native of Rochester, died Sept. 20, 2011, in Baltimore. She was 98.
Sister Hettel grew up in Rochester’s Holy Family Parish and attended St. Joseph School. She entered the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Baltimore in 1931 and professed her first vows in 1934. In 1952 she graduated from Mount Mercy College in Pittsburgh.
She taught at various schools in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and from 1967-71 she was principal of Hollidaysburg Catholic School in Hollidaysburg, Pa., where she also taught fourth grade.
In 1982, Sister Hettel became a teacher and assistant principal at St. Margaret Mary School in Irondequoit. She retired to community service at Villa Assumpta in Baltimore in 1992.
Sister Hettel was a participant in a national study on aging and Alzheimer’s disease that has come to be known as the Nun Study. She was one of more than 600 School Sisters of Notre Dame whose lives have been tracked over two decades in an attempt to determine the effects of aging on the brain.
Her Mass of Christian burial was celebrated on Sept. 26 in the chapel at Villa Assumpta, with burial at Villa Maria Cemetery in Glen Arm, Md. She is survived by several nieces, nephews and cousins.
