On December 27, 2022, Anne Theresa Budelis (nee Hyland), passed away. She is the beloved wife of the late Edward M. Budelis; devoted mother of Mary Kerney, Adele Sadosky, Monica Dailey, Andrew Budelis, Joseph Budelis and the late Edward Budelis. Also survived by 7 grandchildren and 8 great grandchildren.

Relatives and friends are invited to visit at the Our Lady of the Angels Chapel, 711 Maiden Choice Lane, Catonsville, Maryland, on Wednesday, January 4 from 10 until 11 am at which time a funeral mass will be held. Interment to follow at Baltimore National Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Irish Shrine Museum, https://www.irishshrine.org/

A mother to six, including Little Eddie, Nanie to seven, and great-grandmother (or Big Nan) to eight. To Anne, there was no better way to describe her, because this family was her life and her greatest accomplishment.

I was lucky to have both of my grandmothers for 45 years. I know how rare that is, what that time with them meant. Sadly, in the last few months, we've lost them both. Two amazing women who both had a huge impact. But they were very different women.

My dad's little sister would tell you their mother lived by the motto "keep a stiff upper lip," and that approach taught me determination, independence, resilience, and more.

But Nanie, my mom's mom, provided the softer side. If someone in her family needed her, she got there, even though she never learned to drive.

That love and support allowed us, the grandkids, to prosper and grow into adulthood. Among the cousins we are teaching the next generation, supporting the U.S. Navy, working to ensure government works for those in frigid upstate New York, and helping to bring the next generation of life-saving medicines to market. We have an engineer and a burgeoning artist among us.

Benefiting society, helping people. I, however, took another path – politics.

When I started during college in the late 90s and dove headlong in during the early 2000s, both sides of the aisle fought to own the term "family values." To this day, it means different things to different people.

To me, it means Nan. Always has.

Quietly, in her own way, she taught acceptance, forgiveness and how to care. The term "tough love" was not in her vocabulary, possibly to a fault. She was loyal and expected her family to look out for each other. It broke her heart when anyone in her family struggled. We all probably took a year or two off her life, she'd have outlived us all but for the worry caused by our shenanigans. But she worried because she cared so much about her people.

Not sure why, but I was appointed to take over from Nan and Gran'pop as keeper of the family historical records. A few years ago, Drew and I took Nan up the Eastern Shore, visiting spots I had found where Nan's family had settled in the late 1600s. I don't know where we went wrong, but man, the family owned a helluva lot of bayfront property back in the day, think we might be able to stake a claim on a good chunk of Tilghman Island, if anyone knows a good lawyer.

We finished the day at a winery near Hyland Point on the Elk River in Cecil County, named after yes, the same Hylands into which Anne was later born. From that vantage point, we could see where the Hylands had settled 350 some odd years ago, and 100 years later, where the Brits swept thru en route to occupying Philadelphia at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. It was awesome to hear her tell her family's story to the ladies running the winery just a few hundred feet from where her family got its start in America, and to see her interest in what the ladies running the place were able to pass along about the land and its history.

Growing up, I hadn't known all of that, knew nothing about the I don't know how many Greats Great-Grandfather who had served as an officer in the Revolutionary War, or his cousin who had been aide-de-camp to George Washington. To me, she was the little old Irish lady who never met a stranger.

Yes, she was Irish Catholic to her core. On the Irish front, I'm pretty sure when she wasn't slipping cash or candy to her grandkids, she also probably slipped some cash into the basket for the IRA back in the day. And it was her family still in Ireland who welcomed us with open arms and gave us a free house to stay in when we took the kids to Galway in 2018. And she was nothing if not Catholic. When asked about dying, before seeing Gran'pop and Little Eddie, her first hope was to meet her maker.

That said, her ancestry was more complicated than that. So when I think of why she, in my mind, embodied "family values," I think back to the stories she was telling when Drew and I were trying to find Hyland Point. Her family's story reminds us things didn't end well in the late 1800s when old money falls in love with the poor Irish Catholic immigrant girl, so much so that Nan, an only child, grew up knowing she had cousins on her dad's side, those Hylands, who didn't know she existed, or pretended that was the case after her father was orphaned by age 11, having lost both of his parents at a young age, and the family split caused by his parents' marriage deepened.

The last few times I saw her, it took a minute before she realized who I was, which was heartbreaking. In September, she went on and on to Nate about how badly it rained the day Jen and I got married, I had to tell him afterwards she was talking about my mom's wedding day 50 years ago. But clear as day, when someone visiting recently asked about her family's heritage, she simply replied, "Jeff knows my story." It's hard to truly know someone 50 years your senior, you know the bits you see, and they are viewed through the limited prism of a growing kid. But digging into her family's history, for me, explained who she was, why she loved her famlly so much and gave so much of herself.

Anne Hyland Budelis, yes, a daughter of the Hylands, but also proudly the daughter of the Gannons and McHughs of Galway, a loving mother of 6, Nanie to 7, and great-grandmother to 8 so far, who spent every day of her life personifying "family values," died peacefully last week at the age of 95.

-Jeff Sadosky (Grandson)