Sister Augusta Conter, of the Sisters of St. Dominic of Amityville, who was a teacher, principal, counselor, dies at 93

Her first name suggested somberness, but Sister Augusta Conter of the Sisters of St. Dominic of Amityville evinced great playfulness throughout her 75 years as a parochial school teacher, principal and guidance counselor.

"As an administrator, one of the greatest gifts you can have is a sense of humor that enables people to relate well with you," said the religious order’s Sister Pat Koehler, her superior. "And she had a lightness of spirit that enabled people to be free in front of her — to be their authentic selves because she was her authentic self."

Sometimes she even took that playful spirit to Jake’s 58 Casino Hotel in Islandia, Sister Pat said, chuckling.

"Oh, you're not supposed to know that," laughed Al Barbarino, a Catholic recording artist, lay Franciscan and evangelist who had Augusta as a grade school teacher, stayed in touch through the years and sang at her funeral Mass. "She was so alive in her sisterhood and in the secular world as well. And anyone and everyone who met her loved her because of those personal qualities."

Sister Augusta died Aug. 7 of natural causes in the Carlin Hall nursing care unit in the order's Queen of the Rosary Motherhouse. She was 93.

Born in Livo, Trentino, a village in northern Italy, on Nov. 4, 1932, she and twin sister Pia's parents were Agostino "August" Giovanni Conter and Tullia Augusta Dalpiaz Conter. Agostino, who immigrated to the United States in 1921 before returning to Italy to start a family, brought his wife and daughters to the United States in September 1936.

Raised in Brooklyn, Augusta and Pia attended the now-closed Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary elementary school in Williamsburg, and then boarded at the Dominican Juniorate, Villa Maria, in Water Mill. Graduating in 1946, Augusta went on to the Dominican Juniorate High School.

She entered the novitiate of Queen of the Rosary Motherhouse on Sept. 8, 1950, and received the Dominican habit as a novice and her religious name, Sister Marie Francesca, on Aug. 4, 1951. She professed her first vows a year later and her final vows in 1955.

"I don't know why, really. It's a mystery" as to what prompted her vocation, Sister Augusta said in 2021. "All I remember is that in the seventh grade, [a priest] came to our ... class and asked us to write down whatever we'll be when we grow up. I wrote down ‘secretary or nun.’ Before I knew it, I signed up for the juniorate. I guess it was God's will."

She received a bachelor of business administration in 1961 from St. John’s University’s School of Commerce, now The Peter J. Tobin College of Business, and a master of social sciences from Brooklyn College in 1970. She taught at nearly a dozen elementary and high schools throughout New York City, on subjects ranging from business and finance to Spanish and Italian — two of the five languages in which Sister Augusta was fluent, Sister Pat said.

She also served as assistant principal at Brooklyn’s now-closed All Saints High School and extant St. Edmund Preparatory High School, and as principal at the since-closed St. Bartholomew Catholic Academy in Elmhurst, Queens, and Brooklyn’s extant St. Patrick Catholic Academy. She served as a teacher and guidance counselor at Manhattan’s now-closed Rhodes Preparatory School.

She was an associate director of the Office of Prison Ministries in Brooklyn and did pastoral counseling in that borough’s Our Lady of the Angels parish.

Even after retiring in 2011, "Gussie never felt that she was not useful," said Sister Pat. "She was a doer." Among other things, "She helped in our heritage center," working to update, relabel and store "thousands of files. She spent months doing it and loved every minute of it. And then she would go into the library and take care of the books, making sure they came back in, or if new books were donated, she would label them."

"Gussie was a good friend to so many people," Sister Pat said. "They just enjoyed being around her, sitting at the table at lunch or breakfast. Her humor would brighten a day because she'd be kidding and telling stories. She so enjoyed life."

She is survived by her sister, Pia Conter, also a nun, who lives in the room adjoining Sister Augusta’s at the motherhouse. A funeral Mass was held Tuesday in the motherhouse’s St. Albert Chapel, followed by interment in the order’s cemetery in Amityville.