Rita Tobin

Rita Tobin passed away peacefully on August 31, 2024, at Seasons Hospice in Rochester, with her beloved nieces Michelle and Cheryl by her side. She had been in declining health for several months.

The youngest of Walter and Veronica Tobin’s five children, Rita was born on July 15, 1937, in New Prague, where she attended St. Wenceslaus grade school and New
Prague High School. 

After high school, Rita joined the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota. During her 20 years as a Benedictine sister, she graduated from St. Cloud
University and St. Benedict Hospital School of X-ray Technology in Ogden, Utah, then worked as an X-ray technologist, first in Ogden, and later at St. Cloud Hospital and the Mayo Clinic. Expanding her mission dramatically, Rita joined a medical team with the Thomas Dooley Foundation and worked in Laos at the height of the Viet Nam War.
 

After returning to Minnesota and leaving the convent, she moved to Rochester as a social worker, caring for senior citizens with Family Service Rochester and for foster
children with Olmstead County.

Rita was an irresistible combination of outspokenness and compassion, willfulness and tenderness, who collected lifelong friends in every one of her chapters. She took care of former grade school classmates when they needed help and gathered high school buddies for reunions. She stayed close to her sisters in the Benedictine community and saw her Laos colleagues through their own bouts with declining health. She befriended young coworkers and became a vicarious aunt to her friends’ children. Most importantly, she was “Auntie” - in fact a surrogate mother - to her sister’s children after their mother died.
 

She traveled widely, read incessantly, loved politics, and of course kept up with her wide circle of friends. In her final act of giving, Rita donated her body to the Mayo Clinic for research.
 

Rita is preceded in death by her parents, her sisters Mae, Jean, and Patty, and her brother David. She is survived by nieces and nephews Cheryl Streitman, Michelle Miller,
Jerry Miller, Kevin Miller, Steve Miller, Paul Robb, Rick Tobin, Cathy Tobin, Michele Villegas, Jeffrey Garcia, Judy Boyd, and David Witty; several great- and great- great-
nieces and -nephews; and many, many friends.

Celebrations of Rita’s life will be held at later dates, both at her Realife community in Rochester and at her favorite lake cabin near St. Cloud.