Marie Dolores O’Neill, “Lori”, passed away May 5th, 2018 at Penn Hospice in her 74th year. Beautiful, smart, tall, well-dressed, sophisticated and much loved, she favored her left-hand but persisted in the right-handed world. Marie was a favorite friend, a much-loved relative with many friends and companions over the years although she was known to enjoy her privacy too. Among other talents Marie was a gourmet cook, blending recipes from America with her Lithuanian heritage and her extensive European and African travels. An admirer of the Fine Arts she was often inside the museums of Philadelphia, and Europe.
She will be greatly missed. 

Marie lived in the Oxford Circle section of Philly for 53 years and in the Logan/Art Museum area for 20 years. She loved Center City and the Logan Circle area especially her 1883 home on Spring Street. She graduated from Saint Martin of Tours in 1958 and was the most attractive smiling sweet lady in her graduation photo. Lori graduated Little Flower high, and received her degree from Temple University. She was a paralegal manager at Dechert LLP aka. Dechert Price and Rhodes, an international law firm of more than 900 lawyers in 28 locations around the world. When she retired her co-workers gave her cash and the firm matched the amount. Marie donated all of the money to the Lithuanian Orphans, we think in Georgia.
One of her cars was a Volkswagen that she kept in good repair for many, many years. She often loaned it to her older brother Bill when he desperately needed to travel to Villanova to get his engineering degree.
Marie loved her Sunbeam too. Her older brother rebuilt the top of the engine for which she was immensely grateful, but she gave up owning a car because it wasn’t much needed in center city. Two neighbors let her use their Prius and she often drove them to and from the airport thrn used the car to travel to Quakertown to visit with Terree her beloved niece.
Marie was a pianist as was her mother Philomena for whom her parents purchased a Cunningham player piano that is now in the care of Marie’s niece Terree of Zionsville, PA. Marie’s parents purchased a Wurlitzer spinet piano for her.

Her half great granduncles, Pat and Mike Shugrue were Sheriffs in Dodge City where Pat succeeded William B. (Bat) Masterson. Marie traveled to Dodge City KS for a Shugrue reunion
The Irish roots of Marie are long and deep with some ancestors coming from Castlemaine, others from Cork in Ireland, but the Lithuanian roots are deepest.
Her Grandpop O’Neill, — William J. Sr, who was Irish and German & grandmother Kathryn (Catherine?) Emanual Allison Raith whose father was a German Raith and her mother an Irish Sughrue so Katherine was 50% Irish and 50% German whose Shugrue grandmother was an Irish Sughrue and Irish Flavahan from Timothy Sughrue and Julia Cronin. Cronin came from a Cronin and a McHenry. The Sughrue ancestors go back to about 1793. On the Raith (German) side the record shows it goes back to about 1760 or so in the South West of Germany and the area around Heidelberg, Baden-Wurtemburg and the Black Forrest.
On Mom’s side 100% Lithuanian.
Dad was 75% Irish, 25% German, – based on half of his fathers ancestry and half of his mothers. .
Marie was 50% Lithuanian from Mom and 37.5% Irish and 12.5% German from Dad although she was happier being known as Lithuanian.

‘Lori’ was clearly light-hearted and happiest in her Logan Circle home and the  center city areas. 

Marie loved: cosmopolitan Philadelphia; great libations; and her nieces and nephews. Hobbies included trips to European and African locations, –Lithuania was a special trip as was her first international trip to Casablanca, Morocco in Africa, eventually travelling to Egypt where she toured the Nile river; to Prague, Paris, and Ireland as well as Nova Scotia and Kansas for her Shugrue family ancestors. Marie was an avid equestrian since her first pony ride on Higbee Street.

She left behind two older brothers, Bill, an engineer, marketeer and manager, and Frank, a graduate of St. Joe’s Institute For Latin America Relations who speaks fluent Spanish and Portuguese. Frank  worked and traveled about South America and is retired and working on a small cow farm in Alabama which suits him just fine. Lori had five nieces, Terree, Traci,  Suzanne, Nancy and Megan; one nephew, Christopher; five grandnieces Autumn, Sequoya, Aidyn, Bryn, and Francesca, four grandnephews, Hunter, Roark, Zachery and Egan; a grandniece Caroline, and a great grand step-nephew Alex Scofield of Philadelphia as well as her remaining living cousins: Patricia Doyle-Kras, Ed, Dorothy and Dave Danasavich, Frank McDonald, and Joe, Paul and Anton Stone.

Her Dodge City ancestors, the famous twin sheriffs Pat and Mike Shugrue, were born in County Kerry, Ireland. Marie was delighted to travel to Dodge City, Kansas for a Shugrue family reunion.

Marie rarely missed a birthday, a dance recital, or a family gathering.  She enjoyed her independent cosmopolitan life in the city as well as her travels to other places and to the homes of her relatives.

She would say:

I could not stay another day,
To love, to laugh, to work or play;
Tasks left undone must stay that way.
And if my parting has left a void,
Then fill it with remembered joy.
A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss…
Ah yes, these things I, too, shall miss.
My life’s been full, I’ve savored much:
Good times, good friends, a loved-one’s touch.
Perhaps my time seemed all too brief—
Don’t shorten yours with undue grief.
Be not burdened with tears of sorrow,
Enjoy the sunshine of the morrow.

Her ashes will be suitably dispersed over the Camden NJ grave of our parents. She remains deeply loved and locked forever within our hearts and our memory.

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