John Baptist and Mary Ann Busse DeNardi welcomed their youngest child a girl on July 16, 1912. She also had one sister and five older brothers. This daughter was named Mary Ann after her mother. Father James Pike baptized her at St. Charles Church.
Mary Ann began her formal education in 1918 at St. Charles School, St. Mary, Kentucky. She graduated from High School in 1929. Her teachers were Mount Saint Joseph Ursuline Sisters.
In September 1929, Mary Ann came to Mount Saint Joseph to enter the Ursuline community. Nine young women received the Ursuline habit, and Mary Ann received the name Sister Charles Ann.
Sister Charles Ann’s first teaching assignment was at St. Ann, Howardstown, Kentucky where she taught the first four grades for six years in a two room schoolhouse, a seven month term. In her over forty year teaching career, Sister Charles Ann ministered in New Haven (Boone’s Mill), Flaherty, Raywick, Holy Cross, Knottsville ( St. William), and St. Joseph (St. Alphonsus) in Kentucky. She was also in Glennonville, Missouri, and in New Mexico at Blanco, Waterflow, Farmington, and St. Fidel. While in New Mexico, she taught Spanish Americans, Navaho, Acoma and James Indians.
In 1975, Sister Charles Ann retired from active classroom teaching and moved to St. Ignatius Retirement Center in Louisville where she tutored in the St. Ignatius School, visited the sick and elderly, volunteered with the Red Cross and worked in the outreach program there to the homeless/street people and poor. In 1989, she retired to the Mount Saint Joseph Motherhouse after fifty-nine years of service to God’s children. In her later years, her eyesight failed. She spent her time enjoying classical music on the radio and cassette tapes, and listening to the rosary on tape daily.
About 3 o’clock in the afternoon, December 17, 2004, Sister Charles Ann DeNardi quietly slipped away for eternity with her creator God. The wake service was held Sunday evening, December 19th with the funeral mass on Monday Morning December 20th. Chaplain Father Joseph Mills was the celebrant with her brother Father Charles DeNardi and Father Aloysius Powers as concelebrants. Due to the extreme cold, the burial service was held in the Chapel gathering space. She was buried in the convent cemetery.