Frances Kathleen Cooney

Frances Kathleen Cooney (nee Rudell) was born in Detroit, Michigan on April 15, 1915, the second of five children of George and Florence Rudell. On October 19, 1940 she married our beloved father, John F. Cooney, an attorney and FBI agent. From Detroit, our father's later employment took the family to Southern California in 1959. Upon retirement in 1987, our parents moved to Las Vegas.

Together they had seven children, all of whom survive - John, Jr. (wife Marilyn), Florence Mary, Georgia, Sarah (husband Bruce Baldecchi), Frances (husband James Sherwood), Mary Ellen (husband David Curry), and Elizabeth. Frances also left five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Frances was a beautiful woman who was employed as a model while in her twenties. She was also a proficient pianist and organist. In addition, Frances was a talented seamstress who produced many items of stylish clothing for her children and herself. She was an artist who made beautiful dolls, painted their faces and dressed them in attractive clothes that she made. While raising seven children, Frances was always well-turned out in the jewelry, handbags and shoes she adored. Some of those items were purchased with her employee discount at J.L. Hudson's in Detroit and Robinson's and Bullock's in Southern California, upscale department stores where she enjoyed working. In her later years, Frances avidly followed the Triple Crown horse races, to which she applied her own inimitable system for determining the probable winner, and enthusiastically dropped quarters into her favorite video poker machines.

Frances loved dogs and highly valued their company all her life.

Our mother was an engaging woman, highly empathetic and quick with a laugh. She sacrificed for us, and she was always there for us. Mom was the matriarch of our family, a steadying influence, the person around whom all family activities revolved. She delighted in her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren. While she lived a long and virtuous life, still we mourn her loss. We, her children, loved her deeply and will miss her more than we can say. Although several of her children contributed greatly to Frances' care, the family is particularly grateful to our sister, Florence Mary Cooney, for the years of care she provided to our mother, allowing her to remain in her own home, active and alert, until the end of her life.

Frances was a lifelong devout Catholic. A Catholic funeral mass was celebrated at St. Joseph Husband of Mary Catholic Church, with interment next to our father at Palm Cemetery in Las Vegas, Nevada.