Leonora “Nora” R. Santos, who served many years in Hawaii as a Catholic school teacher, principal and associate superintendent, died in Waialua on Jan. 27. She was 79.
Her funeral is 10:30 a.m. Feb. 21 at Our Lady of the Mount Church in Kalihi. Viewing begins at 8:30 a.m. Burial will be at Valley of the Temples Memorial Park in Kaneohe at noon.
Leonora Santos was born on Jan. 5, 1935, in Kekaha, Kauai, the youngest of six children of Frank Santos and Lucy Rodrigues.
She attended Kekaha Elementary School and Waimea High School on Kauai. After graduation, she joined the Franciscan Sisters of Charity who staffed the school at her parish of St. Theresa in Kekaha, entering Holy Family Convent in Manitowoc, Wis.
She remained a Franciscan sister for 18 years during which time she traveled throughout the Mainland, Europe and the Philippines.
After leaving the convent, Santos moved to Kaneohe in the early 1970s and worked as a lay teacher at St. Ann School. She then moved to Nuuanu and taught at Cathedral School where after a few years she was appointed principal.
Around 1982, she was hired as an associate superintendent of Hawaii’s Catholic schools under Msgr. Daniel Dever. After more than a dozen years in the school department, she retired in 1996 and moved to Waialua to live with her sisters Ninning Hookano and Candida Santiago.
In Waialua she became an active member of the North Shore community and St. Michael Parish.
According to her niece Lucy Sequeira, Santos was “loved by all of her family — the Hookano, Santiago and Santos families — and she gave so much love in return.”
“Her priorities in life were our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ first, and her family next,” Sequeira wrote in an email to the Hawaii Catholic Herald. “She was very funny, disciplined, educated, giving, loyal and compassionate.”
Santos is survived by her sister Candida (David) Santiago, sisters-in law Carol (Jerry) Santos, and Gloria (Benny) Santos, and numerous nieces and nephews and grand, great-grand and great-great-grand nieces and nephews.
