Sister Raymond Newell, a retired parochial school teacher, died of a heart attack March 14 at her order's Emmitsburg retirement home. She was 78.

Born Mary Evelyn Newell in Baltimore and raised on McHenry Street, she was a 1948 St. Martin's Academy graduate. In December 1949, she entered the Daughters of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious order, and took the name Raymond.

She earned a bachelor's degree at the old St. Joseph College in Emmitsburg and studied at the College of Notre Dame and at Mount St. Mary's University.

Sister Raymond did child care work at Keating Day Nursery in Cumberland and the Seton Day Nursery in Troy, N.Y., before becoming an elementary school teacher.

She taught at St. Dominic's School in Hamilton and St. Michael's School in Overlea, and at Mother Seton School in Emmitsburg. She also taught in New York, Connecticut, West Virginia and Virginia.

In 1988, when she retired from the classroom, she worked in the Seton Center Thrift Shop in Emmitsburg. Sister Raymond's last active assignment was in the sisters' provincial house dining room.

A Mass was held Tuesday.

Survivors include two brothers, Roy "Jerry" Newell of West Virginia and Lawrence W. "Bill" Newell of Glen Burnie; two sisters, Shirley Sears of Catonsville and Laverne Hand of Boynton Beach, Fla.; and numerous nieces and nephews.