Sister Virginia Marie Flagg, M.M.

Sister Virginia Marie Flagg, M.M., who served as a Maryknoll missioner in the Far East and in Hawaii, died Jan. 26 at Maryknoll Residential Care IV in Ossining. She was 98.

She also served at Transfiguration School in Manhattan’s Chinatown as a teacher, 1954-1955, and principal, 1955-1958. While principal, she was superior of the Maryknoll community there.

She was born in Yonkers to Stella Robblee Flagg and Dr. Paluel J. Flagg. In 1913, Dr. Flagg, who knew the Maryknoll Fathers and Sisters, was the founder of a group that became the Catholic Medical Mission Board.

Sister Virginia entered the Maryknoll Sisters in 1930 and received the religious name Sister Stella Marie. She made her final profession in 1936 in Korea.

She was assigned in 1935 to Japanese-occupied Manchuria as a teacher. At the outbreak of World War II, she and the other Maryknoll sisters were interned for nine months in one of their convents and eventually were exchanged for Japanese prisoners of war. She returned to the United States in 1943.

She was then assigned to Hawaii, where she taught at Maryknoll schools in Honolulu until 1954. After her service at Transfiguration, she was sent to Hong Kong where she was a teacher, principal and superior before returning to Maryknoll in 1970.

She was director of continuing education at the Maryknoll Center, 1971-1973, while also serving as dean of students at Maryknoll’s Rogers College. She worked with the sisters’ retirement community in Monrovia, Calif., 1974-1980, and then served the elderly sisters at Maryknoll until her retirement in 1994.

She is survived by three sisters, Jane Duell, Maryanne Gassner and Dorothy Webster, and two brothers, Noel M. Flagg and Thomas Flagg.

A Funeral Mass was offered Feb. 1 in the main chapel of the Maryknoll Sisters Center, with burial in the sisters’ cemetery.