Ann Maria Snow

Born in 1947, Ann began her life in a Lithuanian refugee camp in Meppen, Germany. Like many post-World War II eastern Europeans, Ann’s parents were chased from their home country presumably by Stalin’s Red Army. As a young child, she was known as “Ramute,” a nickname derived from her given name, Ona Romualda Tumenas. At the tender age of 6 years, she lost her mother to illness and her father left the family shortly thereafter. She recalled traveling from one refugee camp to another in the backs of trucks, playing among buildings ruined by the Allied bombs of several years prior and masses of displaced Lithuanians cheering in the streets the day Stalin died. In time she, along with her two younger siblings, were taken in by another Lithuanian family settled in a camp in Diapoltz, Germany. Eventually, all three children were placed in a German orphanage when the neighbors who cared for them could no longer do so.

Their next adventure saw the two girls, Ann aged 9 and Marie 5, fly to New York where they would shortly meet their new parents, John and Elizabeth Augustinas. Among strangers and unable to speak English (she was fluent in Lithuanian and German), Ann maintained her trademark positive outlook. When asked whether or not she’d resented being uprooted and placed in such a predicament, she replied that she was grateful to simply have a place to call home.

With only 2 months before the start of school, Ann absorbed the English language at a record pace under the tutelage of Mrs. Augustinas and good old American television. That sort of determination and capacity to learn led Ann to, years later, graduate with honors from Our Lady of Wisdom High School in New York and then Bellevue Nursing School in 1969 as a Registered Nurse. Next came a stint in the United States Army. As a lieutenant stationed in Hawaii, she met Ken, at the time an Air Force officer. The two married and had 5 children. After 19 years as a stay-at-home mom, she went back to work as a nurse at Edenwald Retirement Home.

Ann was diagnosed with an advanced stage rare and deadly cancer approximately 3 years ago. Even given a grim prognosis, her attitude remained strictly positive and never, not once, did she utter a complaint.

Ann was survived by her loving husband Albert Kenneth Snow; Devoted mother of Kenneth Snow and his wife Renee, Colin Snow and his wife Kelly, Patricia Lopez and her husband Daniel, Robert Snow, and Joanne Snow; Beloved sister of Marie Albin and John Cummins; sister in-law of Florence Webb and Maria Michel; Cherished grandmother of Mason and Owen Snow.

The family will receive friends in the Lemmon Funeral Home of Dulaney Valley, Inc. 10 W. Padonia Road (at York Road) Timonium, MD 21093 on Thursday from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9PM. A funeral Mass will be celebrated in the Church of the Nativity, 20 E. Ridgely Road Timonium, MD on Friday, July 30 at 9:00 AM. Interment Garrison Forrest Veterans Cemetery. A guest register is available at www.lemmonfuneralhome.com