The daughter of Joseph and Rose Cecil Thompson, Edna was born June 13, 1895, the fifth child in a family of 10 children. She spent early childhood in Louisville, Ky. When she was nine, the family moved to a farm on Cherry Run near Raywick, Ky. She attended St. Francis Xavier Elementary School at Raywick and Mount Saint Joseph Academy for high school.
In April 1913, Edna entered the novitiate at Mount Saint Joseph. After a four‑month postulancy, she received the Ursuline habit and the name Sister Rose Marie on August 5, 1913.
Sister Rose Marie began her apostolate of teaching at St. Patrick School at Stithton, Ky., in 1914 and continued there until the U.S. Government took the location for Camp Taylor in 1918. Other mission assignments took her to Snyder and Plattsmouth, Neb.; Jeffersonville, Ind.; Waterflow, N.M.; and Central City, Calvary, Peonia, and St. Charles, Ky. She spent her last five years of teaching in the novitiate at Mount Saint Joseph. She was a successful teacher of mathematics and science. Her talent, however, did not end there. Sister Rose Marie was a woman of many talents ‑- oil painting, calligraphy, plain and fancy sewing, cooking, canning and preserving fruits and vegetables. Although she suffered from arthritis in her later years and from headaches most of her life, these did not keep her from the customary work of an Ursuline.
Sister Rose Marie spent her last years as a patient in the infirmary at the Mount. She was bedfast for more than a year. She died February 10, 1968. Msgr. Albert J. Thompson, former chaplain, and Father Bernard Powers, chaplain, concelebrated the funeral Mass on February 12. Sister Rose Marie’s remains are buried in the convent cemetery. Among her survivors was her Ursuline sister, Sister Mary Fides.