November 3, 1936 - January 14, 2023

Gay Jean St. John was born Gay Jean Dilworth to Agnes Perring and Harold Dilworth on November 3, 1936, in Wheeling, West Virginia. She was a straight-shooter and did not tolerate fools. She was a devout Catholic, honest and compassionate. She had two brothers, Harold Dilworth Jr. and Robert Dilworth that precede her in death. Raised by her grandmother (Mary Miller) and her mother’s sister (Mildred Perring Wurtzbacher), after the death of her parents at a young age, she attended Catholic high school in Wheeling and then nurses’ training at St. Francis in Columbus Ohio, graduating in 1958. She met an Air Force man, Dominic Anthony St. John (Sangiovanni) of New Haven, Connecticut, stationed near Columbus, Ohio in the early 1960s and they married in January 1962. They loved to dance!

After the birth of their daughter, Anna Maria, in 1963 in Columbus, Ohio, Dominic was transferred to southern California, where their son Dominic Anthony Jr. (“Tony”) was born in 1964 in Riverside. Soon thereafter, Dominic was called to duty in Vietnam in 1966, and Gay and the children temporarily moved to Connecticut, to live with Dominic’s parents.

After Dominic returned to the US, they briefly lived in Ohio, before moving to northern California to US Air Force Base, Beale, until his retirement in 1974 when they moved to Killingworth, Connecticut. While in northern California, Gay was a psychiatric nurse at a state hospital and very active in her church and children’s lives. After moving to Connecticut, she worked as a geriatric and psychiatric nurse, most recently at Laurelwoods, until the age of 70, while also being active in her local Catholic church women’s group and community emergency response team in Killingworth.

She is survived by her son, Tony, his wife Amy and grandson Collin of East Haddam, Connecticut; her daughter, Anna Maria of Portland, Oregon; sisterin-law Sue Dilworth of Westwego, Louisiana, and cousins, nieces and nephews in Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, and Texas on the Dilworth side of her family; and brother-in-law and sisterin-law Stephen and Nancy St. John of Killingworth, Connecticut, and nieces and nephews in Connecticut and Georgia on the St. John side of her family.

A Memorial Mass is scheduled at St. Lawrence Church at 7 Hemlock Drive in Killingworth on February 4, 2023, at 11:00 AM followed by refreshments in the church hall.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the American Childhood Cancer Organization Home - ACCO or St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital stjude.org . www.swanfh.com