Mary Beth Shaughnessy

Mary Beth Shaughnessy

marybeth-color“If ever there was someone who fit the title of “Heart of the House,” it was Mary Beth Shaughnessy.  Although that is a view expressed by Rob Hammock, many others of her Unity family would echo the sentiment.

On August 24, just 10 days following her 60th birthday, Mary Beth left this life and a legacy of love, too seldom paralleled.  Despite a diagnosis unshared, even in early to mid August, she was serving, as she had for years of Sundays, in the Unity Bookstore.  Children, especially, warmed her heart.  When families with children would pass by the bookstore, she always focused on the little ones with a personal and genuine remark, even keeping gum in the drawers of her desk for them and remembering their birthdays with some little treat.

After earning her nursing degree from Castleton State Coillege (now Castleton University) in Vermont in 1977, Mary Beth relocated to Pinellas County.  Her mother, Margaret “Peg” Shaughnessy, who spent winters in FL prior to her transition last year, had been a member of UCC for more than 20 years. Mary Beth worked as a pediatric nurse and charge nurse at Suncoast Hospital, Largo for many years and later became the nurse manager of the Krug Clinic, a multi-specialty teaching clinic.  For the last several years, she had been a nursing supervisor at Florida Health Pinellas County.

Mary Beth had been coming to Unity since the beginning of the Unity Progressive Council in 1989 and taken many classes, qualifying for the ministry team. She was an active member of Unity, ever present on service Saturdays and a strong supporter of emPower Music & Arts.  Even at the Posi music weeks,  her joy was in seeing other people enjoy themselves as she co-hosted a “pajama jam” room each year for musicians and guests. Although she could have been on the ministry team, that was not her calling.  Her calling was service.  “She was easily the most private person I’ve ever known,” Rob stated, and others agree.  “She was more than a friend but somebody you could talk to about whatever was going in on your life.  She was completely unjudgemental.  Any comment she might make was very much Truth based.”

A measure of her commitment to Unity principles is recalled by those who have taken Unity classes.  Mary Beth, they say, was often the first person to hand them a copy of Lessons in Truth.

From her bookstore vantage point, Mary Beth would always watch the Sunday lessons on the monitors, and when the strains of “House Built on Love” rang through the church, she would remind Leddy, “they’re playing your song,” another treasured memory of one who helped to build this house.