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This week’s missionary hero is a woman who served God through singing and by being a lay missionary. Her name was Maria Agatha Franziska Gobertina von Trapp.
Maria was born on September 28, 1914 in Zell am See in Austria-Hungary, one of seven children. Maria’s family were known as the Trapp Family Singers that inspired the 1959 Broadway musical and 1965 The Sound of Music. In the movie, the actor Heather Menzies played Maria as the character “Louisa.”
When the Nazis annexed Austria, the von Trapp family fled because Maria’s father, George, had refused to be commissioned in the Nazi navy, and because the family had refused to sing at Adolf Hitler’s birthday party. The family emigrated to the United States in 1938 and settled in Vermont in 1942.
Maria lived in the family’s lodge in Stowe, Vermont, and the family continued to tour until January 1956.
After ending their singing tours, Maria, two siblings, and her stepmother went to Papua New Guinea where they served as lay missionaries. While serving as a missionary, Maria adopted a boy named Kikuli Mwanukuzi.
According to many who knew Maria, she didn’t have a mean bone in her body; she was universally loved.
Maria died on February 18, 2014 in Stowe, Vermont at the age of 99.
