Cecilia Rudzitis was a gifted mother, daughter, wife, and teacher. Throughout her life, she was able to touch many lives both in her home in Minnesota and in New York. Born in Mapleton, Minnesota on September 9, 1964 to Tony and Eilleen Nass, she grew up attending school and working on Tony’s farm. Cecilia attended school first at Mankato State University, before moving to New York City to finish school at Barnard College, where she majored in math.

In the late ’80s in New York, she met her late husband, Peter Rudzitis, and they were married in Mapleton in September 1991. Together they loved to travel and even spent their honeymoon mountaineering in Bhutan before returning to NYC to begin a family. Cecilia and Peter are survived and loved by their four children: Katharine, Christopher, Caleb, and Margaret. Cecilia had a passion for education, and she homeschooled her children through their early education as well as helped to organize a city-wide group of families homeschooling their children. She took the same passion along to teach Kindergarten, and later to be a math specialist at a number of schools in NYC, where she was able to touch many lives as a gifted and patient teacher.

For anyone who met Cecilia, it was immediately apparent that she was a kind and compassionate person. Cecilia was an active and loved member of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, where many lifelong friends were made, and earlier in Minnesota, Saint Teresa's Catholic Church. We are all devastated by this loss, and as her children and parents, we will strive to carry on her legacy of caring for others through our lives.