At the age of 73, Mary Catherine Lybeck, wife of Mark Lybeck passed away on March 27, 2023 surrounded by her loving family. Cathy, as she was known to everyone, was born to the late Eugene F. and Mary Eleanor (née Connell) Burke on January 2, 1950. By all accounts they treated their youngest, rightly, as a princess who could do no wrong. Older brothers Eugene, Gregory and sister Mary Judith welcomed Cathy into their home in Newark, NJ where they lived for a decade before moving to Upper Montclair, NJ.

Cathy soon found a home in the company of the particularly bright students enrolled at Montclair State University's "College High School", a demonstration school where professors taught the classes. The friends she made there would remain lifelong compatriots, regularly reuniting with their families on the Outer Banks, NC for sand, sun, surf and highly competitive boardgames.

In 1967, Cathy enrolled at Vassar College, NY where she studied Anthropology and connected with her Celtic roots. She joined sister Judy for adventures up and down the Emerald Isle's west country before graduating and returning home in 1971. A few years later, Cathy pursued a Master's in Library Science at Columbia University, NY. Degree in hand, she moved to Ridgefield, CT to work as a children's librarian, transfixing the girls and boys with her compelling and dramatic storytelling. Gaining another layer of lifelong friendships there, the New England town was all but perfect.

Then, in summer 1978, she accepted an invitation to travel down to the Waterloo Village Jazz Festival, with some left-over wedding cake in hand, donated by her baker landlord who lived downstairs. There she met a young lawyer, Mark, who proceeded to speed up and down the Garden State Parkway on weekends to visit. They were engaged and married the following year, and Cathy moved to Sleepy Hollow, Plainfield to join Mark and his dog, Rhoda, in his fixer upper on Prospect Ave. Eric joined them in 1980 and Sara in 1983 once some urgent window repairs weather-proofed a particularly drafty room upstairs. The family soon moved up the neighborhood to Belvidere Ave where Jane was born in 1986.

During this time, the children enrolled at The Wardlaw-Hartridge School where Cathy worked in the Lower School Library and is remembered fondly by the many students who required erasers and binders from the aptly named "Mother's Store", which she co-managed. In 1996, the family moved to Warren, NJ to a house that would gradually become their empty nest as Jane, Sara and Eric left for college, then careers out of state. Jane would marry Michael Fulton, Sara married Max Adler, and Eric married Eleanor (Lavan) Lybeck. Six grandchildren soon arrived, Samuel Fulton, Andrew Adler, Marianne Lybeck, Cecilia Lybeck, Matthew Fulton and Jack Adler keeping 'Granny McTibbles' busy with visits, Facetime calls, enormous hugs and impeccable bedtime story reading skills.

For 8 years, Cathy and Mark retired to picture-perfect Davidson, NC where they regularly attended local concerts either at the college or in the evening sun on the town green. Everywhere they went another cohort of lifelong friends soon followed buoyed in the joyful wake of Cathy's ever thoughtful, kind and generous welcome and effervescent laugh.

Following the isolation of Covid, the Lybecks decided to move back North to Collegeville, PA to be nearer to family. Regrettably, only soon thereafter a diagnosis of cancer saw Cathy turn bravely towards the final chapter in her book, leaving us all wishing we could hear her start it over again from the beginning.

Funeral services will be held privately at the convenience of the family. A celebration of life will be held later this summer for friends and family to share in her memory. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made in her name to the Bonnie Brae Development Office by visiting bonnie-brae.org/donations or to the World Central Kitchen by visiting worldcentralkitchen.org/donate. Arrangements are being handled by the Campbell - Ennis - Klotzbach Funeral Home, Inc., Phoenixville, PA. Condolences may be offered online at www.PhoenixvilleFuneralHome.com.