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Sister Maria Florence Giambalvo, M.M., who served in the Philippines and South Korea, died Dec. 15 in Maryknoll Sisters Residential Care, Ossining. She was 87. She was a teacher and principal at Maryknoll elementary schools in Baguio, Lipa and Lucena in the Philippines through the 1950s and 1960s. She also taught high school, 1969-1971, on the South Pacific Island of Koror in the Caroline Islands. She did congregational service at Maryknoll headquarters, 1971-1979, then was assigned to Maryknoll Hospital in Pusan, South Korea, where she did secretarial work and taught English to the staff members. She returned to Maryknoll in 1985 and served in various positions until entering Residential Care in 1996. Born in Benhasi, Libya, where her father was serving with the Italian Army, she grew up in Brooklyn when her family immigrated to the United States. She entered Maryknoll in 1940 and took the religious name Sister Maria Austin. She professed final vows in 1946, after doing social work in Manhattan's Chinatown for a year. She served in Maryknoll's junior seminary in Mountain View, Calif., 1946-1950. A Funeral Mass was offered Dec. 19 at the Maryknoll Sisters Center with burial in the sistersÕ cemetery.
