Thelma Domenici, elder sister of late senator, dies

Businesswoman and author Thelma Domenici, the sister of the late Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., died Sunday in her home in Albuquerque with friends and family by her side. She was 96.

Domenici worked for decades in the health care industry, in both the public and private sectors, serving much of her early career as a religious sister at hospitals around the nation.

“Thelma was always somebody who wanted to be involved,” her younger sister, Rose Ann (Domenici) Hamberger, said Monday. “She was very young at heart. She enjoyed life and she loved people and loved being around people. She got her energy from being around people.”

Among her accomplishments, Domenici served as CEO of Hospital Home Health Care, a joint venture of two Albuquerque hospitals, which she built into a firm with 800 employees that served more than 1,000 physicians. Domenici considered her 14-year leadership of the firm the capstone of her professional career, according to a statement from her family.

“She was a strong woman,” Hamberger recalled. “Definitely a leader. Someone who enjoyed taking charge and took charge very well.”

Domenici also was the first female executive of Samaritan Health Services in Phoenix, creating a new program to help families caring for patients after discharge and later focusing on strategic development for the hospital system.

In her later years, she founded and served as CEO of Thelma Domenici & Associates, which offered corporate coaching and social skills development programs for firms both within and outside New Mexico.

“She was an incredibly influential woman in many lives because she was very wise and very personable,” said Kyla Thompson, a longtime friend and owner of Kyla Thompson Consulting.

“She was just a remarkable woman,” Thompson said. “She coached how to be a business person, but also how to handle the human element of business. That was a real specialty of hers.”

Domenici spent more than a decade writing her “Ask Thelma” column, which appeared first in the Albuquerque Tribune beginning in 2004, and then the Albuquerque Journal from 2007-2014.

The last of her 512 columns was published in the Journal’s Dec. 28, 2014 edition, when she was 86 years old.

“This column is part of my legacy,” she told readers. “You know this column was never just about etiquette.”

Her parting advice boiled down to four main themes: kindness, appreciation for life, mutual respect, and what she called “heartsense,” which she defined as “that internal awareness that leads you to what really is the right thing to do.”

“If there’s something you need to change, change it,” she wrote. “If there’s forgiveness you need to seek, seek it. If there’s love you need to give, give it. And while you do it remember, good manners never go out of style.”

Domenici and her four younger siblings were the children of Italian immigrants who grew up working in their father’s store, the Montezuma wholesale grocery business in Albuquerque, according to a statement provided by the family.

Her siblings included Pete Domenici, New Mexico’s longest-serving senator, and Sister Marianella Domenici, who headed St. Mary’s School in Albuquerque for 23 years.

Thelma Domenici’s niece and Pete’s daughter, Nella Domenici, is running this fall as a Republican to unseat New Mexico’s senior senator, Democrat Martin Heinrich.

“I watched my Aunt Thelma trailblaze in the many paths of her life,” Nella Domenici said in a written statement. “She was a ‘first’ in so many of her professional pursuits and accomplishments. She inspired me and many others to dare to trailblaze, too.”

In 1951, Thelma Domenici took vows with the Ohio-based religious order, The Sisters of Charity, and became Sister Ancella. She was assigned to hospitals in several states, including St. Vincent’s Hospital (now Cristus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center) in Santa fe.

“Eventually, she reached the wrenching decision to leave the Sisters and to pursue her life in the secular community,” the family’s statement said. She moved to Washington at age 42 to begin secular life.

In the early 1970s, she took a position with Indian Health Services. In 1975, she secured a post as executive secretary for health in the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Domenici served on many nonprofit boards, including UNESCO, the Center for Domestic Violence, New Futures, ACCION New Mexico, Rotary Club, New Mexico Symphony, the Albuquerque Museum Foundation, the University of New Mexico Foundation, Catholic Charities, AFOTEC, and the New Mexico Museum Board of Regents.

In 2008, she received the Weems Artfest Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Mary Ann Weems, former owner of Weems Art Galleries and Weems International Art Fest, said she and Thelma Domenici initially connected through Thelma’s love for art.

“She took such an interest in the gallery,” Weems said. “We had this incredibly fun repertoire.”

They began a friendship that lasted nearly 40 years. The two met after Domenici asked for Weems’s help at an art show at the Weems gallery. She was purchasing “Santos” to give as gifts.

“It’s a loss for me and a lost for the community,” she said of Domenici. “She was just a treasure.”

Weems noted her friend’s natural leadership skills and her work as a mentor with young girls in the community.

They spoke regularly, Weems recalled, and would always end phone calls the same way. “One of us would say ‘I love you,’ and the other would respond, ‘I love you more.’”

Domenici is survived by her sister Rose Ann (Domenici) Hamberger and numerous nieces and nephews.

Domenici was preceded in death by her parents Cherubino “Chapo” and Alda (Vichi) Domenici and by her sisters Mary Domenici Stratman and Karlene Guillon, the former Sen. Pete Domenici and Sister Marianella Domenici.

Funeral Mass will be held at 10 a.m. Sept. 21 at Our Lady of the Annunciation Catholic Church, 2621 Vermont NE.