Maria C. Lienhardt

Maria C. Lienhardt, 84, of Forest Park, Jaffrey died peacefully Monday September 5, 2011 at the Good Shepherd Health Care Center in Jaffrey following a period of failing health. She was born March 31, 1927 in Jersey City, NJ daughter of the late Otto and Elsie (Branzugus) Raphael. Mrs. Lienhardt has been a resident of Jaffrey for more than twenty five years, having previously lived for nine years in Keene and before that in Wayne, New Jersey. She had formerly worked as a telephone operator and later as a sales clerk at Bamberger’s Department Store in New Jersey. Maria studied voice in New Jersey where she was born and later in New York with private teachers. Once upon a time she won two trophies in the Concord Beauty Pageant and also appeared on television in Community Auditions hosted by Dave Maynard on WBZ-TV in Boston. She has sung for Actors’ Circle Theatre in “House of the Blue Leaves”, the Branch River Theater in “Brigadoon” and the Raylynmor Opera of “La Boehm”. In one show at the Monadnock Country Club in Peterborough she sang while dressed as a Nun in a wheel chair. She was a member of the Moose Lodge in Keene as a well as a communicant of St. Patrick Parish in Jaffrey. Survivors include her husband of forty seven years Arthur J. Lienhardt of Jaffrey; two brothers, Larry Raphael of Los Angeles, California and Otto Raphael of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Family and friends are warmly invited to call at the Cournoyer Funeral Home and Cremation Center, 33 River Street, in Jaffrey on Thursday, September 8, 2011 from 9:00AM until the time of the Mass.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 11:00AM in St. Patrick Church, 89 Main Street, Jaffrey. Rev. Wilfred H. Deschamps, Pastor, will officiate. Burial will follow in St. Patrick Cemetery in Jaffrey.