Imelda Louise Sansone, multilingual Baltimore County educator, dies

Jacques Kelly, Baltimore Sun
·3 min read

Imelda Louise Sansone, a Baltimore County Public Schools language teacher who started an Italian culture club, died of pneumonia April 14 at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Lutherville resident was 88.

Born in Collelongo, a town in the Abruzzo region of Italy, she was the daughter of Benilde and Angelo Sansone. She spent her first 12 years in Italy with her mother and extended family while her father, who had moved to Baltimore, worked at Bethlehem Steel.

She, her mother and sister sailed to New York City in 1948 to reunite the family.

“Imelda remembered the horrible sea passage,” said her niece Michelle Costa-Briggs. “The boat was tossed around by the sea as if it were a toy.”

When she saw her father, she did not remember him.

“’I looked at this man who I was introduced to as my father, but I didn’t know him,'” said her niece, recalling her aunt’s conversation. “‘He was a stranger to me. I last saw him when I was 4.’”

The family initially lived on Exeter Street and later moved to a Loch Raven Boulevard home.

She was a 1954 graduate of the old Institute of Notre Dame and earned a bachelor’s degree at what is now Notre Dame of Maryland University, where she was vice president of the Modern Language Club and secretary of the National French Honor Society.

Ms. Sansone was active in school musicals and operas.

“Like her father, she had an operatic voice,” said her niece.

She earned a second bachelor’s degree at Middlebury College in Vermont.

She held a part-time job wrapping holiday gifts at the old Hutzler’s department store.

She then joined the old Army Intelligence School and Counter Intelligence Records Facility at Fort Holabird, where she translated and taught the officers Italian and French.

She went on to become a foreign language teacher for Baltimore County Public Schools at what is today Pikesville High, where she taught French, Spanish and Latin for nearly 35 years.

In the summers of 1973 and 1974, she attended the University of Salamanca in Spain to finish a master’s degree in Spanish.

“There she met the love of her life, Miguel Angel, a medical doctor who wanted her to remain in Spain,” said her niece. “When I asked my aunt why she didn’t stay? She said she would have to leave her family behind yet again.”

She was a season ticket holder of the old Baltimore Opera Company.

“She often sang arias around our home while cleaning and grading papers,” said her niece.

She was a founding member of the Circolo Culturale Italiano, the Italian Culture Club.

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She was also a 30-year member of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen’s choir, where she sang second soprano.

After retiring, Ms. Sansone studied piano.

“She joined her teacher and other music enthusiasts on Smithsonian-sponsored trips — a Franz Liszt tour of Italy and a Beethoven tour through Germany,” said her niece.

“She loved music, languages, the structure of words, sentences, the tenses of verbs and the declension of nouns in Latin; history and learning,” her niece said.

“She had no qualms correcting anyone’s English if she heard someone speaking incorrectly. We grew up with punctuation, pronunciation and tense corrections midsentence,” said her niece. “For those of us who attempted speaking or writing in Spanish, French, Latin, and/or Italian, she was quick to correct with a smile or laugh.”

A Mass was held Thursday at the Church of the Nativity in Timonium.

Survivors include two nieces, Paula Stoller, of Towson, and Michelle Costa-Briggs, of Lutherville; a nephew, Matthew Costa, of Lutherville; a sister, Theresa Sansone Costa, of Lutherville; and great-nieces and great-nephews.