Also recorded as: Rita (LaCoss) Rourke.
Wife of the former Lowell mayor Raymond F. Rourke; the two were among the last residents of the Battles Home when it closed in 2004, as the Lowell Sun reported on July 7, 2011.[C-023, C-059]
Documented profile. Built from records we have read: deeds, directories, newspapers, inscriptions. The claims behind the page are listed with it, and what remains uncertain is said plainly.
Rita (LaCoss) Rourke was the wife of Raymond F. Rourke — Lowell firefighter, state representative and the city’s mayor in 1978–79 — whom she married in 1939. In the Battles Home’s last years the couple lived here: the Lowell Sun reported on July 7, 2011 that “former Lowell Mayor Raymond Rourke and his wife” were among the last residents relocated when the home closed in 2004, and a condolence in his obituary of that May comes from a former employee who “knew him and his wife.”
After about 47 years at Fairmount Street, housing up to around eleven residents at a time, the rest home closes. The charity that ran it traced its founding to the will of James M. Battles, who died in 1901 — which is how a “104-year” figure sometimes appears in print.[C-023, C-025]
DocumentedThe Battles Home
Clues gathered from the research compilation and from secondary sources. Published so that others can follow them; none has yet been confirmed against an original record.
This page is a working record, not a finished one. If you are a descendant, a collector, a local historian or an archivist and you hold anything connected to Rita Rourke — a photograph, a letter, a diary, an object, a family story, a document we have misread — we would like to hear from you. We publish nothing without permission, credit every contribution, and correct the page when the evidence says we should.
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