Ruth Ann Petree

Mrs. Ruth Ann Petree of Fernandina Beach, Florida and Saugatuck, Michigan passed away on September 30 at the Community Hospice in Fernandina Beach. Born in Denville, New Jersey, she was the eldest of three children born to the late George and Beulah Piercy.

From an early age, Ruth Ann was a sensitive and precocious lover of all forms of art. She left home after high school to become an airline flight attendant, a brief career of service and travel that would become a metaphor for her life's journey and adventures. She was married at a young age to Noel H. Petree, Jr. and they soon welcomed four children. The marriage ended in divorce. While raising her family, she was irresistibly pulled toward the arts. She studied calligraphy under the illustrious Raphael Bogoslav. With his encouragement, and that of master stone carver and calligrapher John Benson, she applied and was accepted to Cooper Union in New York. However, family commitments prevented her from completing the course.

Driven by that experience, and an entrepreneurial spirit, she began a career in art and graphic design. Starting with an in-home studio in a spare bedroom, she worked for several years as a one-woman design firm, developing her skills and doing much pro bono work for the PTA, church and community groups. In 1978, those beginnings led her to open Petree Graphics in McLean, Virginia, a boutique graphic design and advertising agency with many Washington area and national clients. She was featured in the book, America's New Women Entrepreneurs, which noted the following about Ruth Ann: "Disbelief on the part of her associates that she was anything but a housewife spurred Ruth Ann Petree up the entrepreneurial ladder." 

As her tastes and study expanded, she founded Regali, a business in which she produced and sold handmade art books and decorative boxes to worldwide clients that included Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus.

Throughout her career, her art, work, family and morals were deeply influenced by her abiding Catholic faith. When her second husband was posted to the U.S. Embassy in Rome in 1996, she began a study of mosaic-making that changed her life. Her strong faith in God led her to mosaics. She studied the art in Ravenna and with the Spilembergo School of Mosaics.

Returning to the USA in 2000, she opened Quasivecchio, a decorative arts studio in Newport, Rhode Island. Using her unique creative talents, she produced work that showcased her love for mosaics as well as her proven skills as a bookbinder and paper maker. But she produced some of her most significant work in mosaics. Ruth Ann's most inspired work was an evocative series of large mosaic panels depicting the seven days of creation as recounted in the Book of Genesis. These mosaics were prayerfully donated to the Order of St. Benedict and hang in the permanent collection at Portsmouth Abbey School in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

She was preceded in death by her parents and by her beloved daughter, Margaret Ann (Petree) Walker. Ruth Ann leaves behind her sister, Barbara Sutherland (Tim), brother Bill Piercy (Juliette), her husband of 24 years, Captain Vincent P. Mocini, USN (ret.), son Noel H. Petree III (Karen), and daughters Barbara Koontz (Rusty) and Mary Virginia Petree (Mark Hurley). Her family also includes 10 grandchildren, 3 step-grandchildren and two great grandchildren who will all dearly miss their "Nana."

Visitation will be held at Murphy Funeral Home, 4510 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia From 6 to 8 p.m. on October 6. A Mass of Christian burial will be held at Saint Agnes Church in Arlington, Virginia at 1200 noon on October 7.

Memorial Masses will be celebrated at future dates at Saint Michael's Church in Fernandina Beach, Portsmouth Abbey in Portsmouth, Rhode Island and Saint Peter's Church in Douglas, Michigan. A

Memorial Mass Will be celebrated in St Patrick's Church, on Via Buoncompagni, in Rome, Italy At 5 p.m. on October 8.

Burial will be in Arlington National Cemetery on a date to be determined.

Ruth Ann requested that no floral arrangements be displayed at the funeral; rather, she requested that charitable donations be made in her name to either:

Sisters of Life

38 Montebello Rd.

Suffern, NY 10901

www.sistersoflife.org

Lucy"s Hearth

913 West Main Road

Middletown, RI. 02842

www.lucyshearth.org