SISTER JEAN IRENE MCALLISTER, OP 1929-2021

Sister Jean Irene McAllister, OP
                             1929-2021
                             I would like to be remembered as a joy-filled Dominican committed
                             to my Adrian Congregation, a person who meets and praises God
                             in the beauty and wonder of creation. I would like the world to be a
                             little better for my having lived in it. As Rich Heffern wrote, I would
                             like to be “marinated in life’s goodness” – then I will be prepared to
                             dance to the joy of life into the heavenly Jerusalem.

                             Sister Jean Irene McAllister concluded a March 2005 update to her
                             autobiography with these sentences summing up her long life as an
                             Adrian Dominican Sister.

The future Sister Jean Irene was born January 24, 1929, in Redford, Michigan, and baptized Audrey
Anita. She was the older of two girls born to Daniel and Genevieve (Wagner) McAllister; her sister
Catherine (known as Kay) followed on Christmas Eve 1934.

Both Daniel and Genevieve were born into farming families, Daniel in Kawkawlin Township, Michigan,
near Bay City, and Genevieve in Colon, Michigan, in the southwestern part of the state. Daniel’s
parents both died when he was very young, however, and he was sent to the St. Francis Boys’ Home
in Detroit.

The little family struggled greatly during the Depression and even lost their home at one point, but in
October 1936 the McAllisters were able to get a house in Detroit’s Precious Blood Parish. Audrey’s
earliest schooling had come from the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters who taught at St. Gregory
School, but the move into Precious Blood Parish while she was in second grade brought her into
contact with the Adrian Dominican Sisters who taught at that school. “I loved the joyful and friendly
spirit of the Dominicans, especially Sister Francina Reuther, my fifth-grade teacher,” she wrote in her
autobiography.

When it came time for high school she expected she would have to attend a public school, but her
aunt, an IHM Sister, saw to it that she could enroll at the recently opened Immaculata High School.
During her freshman year, however, she visited Adrian to see a friend who was attending St. Joseph
Academy, with a side trip to the novitiate, and immediately decided she wanted to come to the
Academy and eventually enter the Congregation.

But her family’s financial situation did not allow for this to happen, and so during her freshman and
sophomore years at Immaculata she worked at Detroit’s Mt. Carmel Hospital to try to save up enough
money. And although she was not able to cover the cost despite her best efforts, the Sisters at the
Academy made it possible for her to work to help defray the expense, and she enrolled there for her
junior year in 1945.

Being at the Academy only solidified her desire to become an Adrian Dominican Sister, and she
quickly took the appropriate steps to begin the process. Although her parents wanted her to finish
high school first, they did not stand in the way of her dream, and she became a postulant in June
1946. She was received as a novice and given her religious name that December.

Once her canonical novitiate year and several months of study at Siena Heights College (University)
were completed, she was sent in fall 1948 to her first mission: Garden, Michigan, in Michigan’s Upper

Peninsula, to minister at the catechetical center the Congregation staffed there. She did not stay long,
however.

“I think I was there about three weeks and only taught one day when Mother Gerald came for
visitation and decided I wasn’t needed in Garden,” she wrote. Mother Gerald brought her back with
her to Adrian and soon thereafter Sister Jean Irene was on her way to St. Mary of Mount Carmel
School in Chicago.

“The pastor, who was celebrating his jubilee, had asked for another sister as a present, and so he
called me Sister Jubilee the three years I taught the primary grades there,” she wrote.

Next, in 1951, she was assigned to St. James School in Maywood, Illinois, spending the years 1951-
1953 there before completing her bachelor’s degree in English at Siena Heights in June 1953. From
there came teaching at St. Francis Xavier School, Medina, Ohio (1953-1958); St. Vincent Ferrer
School, Cincinnati (1959-1964); St. Rose of Lima School, Miami Shores, Florida (1964-1965); and St.
Joseph School, Port Huron, Michigan (1965-1969).

She then did office work, supervised study hall, and substitute-taught at Sacred Heart School in Bad
Axe, Michigan, for a year before going to teach remedial reading at Holy Family School in St.
Petersburg, Florida, in 1970 to be close to her parents, who were living in nearby Palmetto, because
her father was in poor health. Daniel died in 1973, and “I was grateful to have been close by for three
years,” she wrote.

Sister Jean Irene was at Holy Family School for nine years before moving to the other side of the
Florida peninsula in 1979 to minister at Our Lady of Lourdes in Melbourne. She split her time the first
year between teaching remedial reading and engaging in pastoral ministry before taking on the latter
full-time, and remained at the parish until 1988, when multiple vocal cord surgeries led her to retire.

She moved to the Rocky Creek Retirement Village in Tampa, Florida, and after yet another surgery
and several months “I was able to talk again, ending my Zachariah period,” she wrote. She led a very
active life in retirement, especially as part of a walking club for which she logged many thousands of
miles; she even won a first-place medal in the mile walk in the Tampa Bay Senior Games in 1991.

Her mother, who had come to live at Rocky Creek as well, died suddenly in 2002 while Sister Jean
Irene was in Adrian for the Congregational event called the Gathering. Sister wrapped up her
mother’s affairs and then, in 2003, moved back to Adrian to reside at the Dominican Life Center.
There, she was a prayerful and joyous presence, known for her jokes, her loving support of others,
her handmade cards and personal notes for holidays, and the creative ways she decorated her
walker to bring a smile to the faces of those she encountered.

Sister Jean Irene died at the DLC on June 25, 2021, aged ninety-two and in her seventy-fourth year
of religious profession. Her fellow Adrian Dominican Sisters and her family alike remembered her at
her wake service as a kind, gentle, generous woman who was deeply spiritual – and who definitely
enjoyed a good laugh. These are just a sampling of the many remembrances from her nieces and
nephews about her sense of humor:

      I always enjoyed visiting with her. I’ll always remember the grin she would get just
      before she would ask a silly question to me. I knew that was the start of a head-slapping
      riddle or pun. I could count on a few of those each time we visited with her. (Bill
      Turkington)

We remember how much she loved to laugh, have fun and dance. She came over to
      visit one day and decided we all needed to learn the dance “the Macarena.” We all had
      a lot of fun and laughed a lot trying to get all the moves right. (Lori Brown Jacobs and
      Natalie Jacobs)

      Aunt Audrey was someone who could always light up a room. My favorite memory of
      her was when she would end the prayer at Thanksgiving with “bless this lunch that we
      are about to munch.” She was selfless, kind, and had a sense of humor like no other.
      She will be missed dearly. (Nikki Davis)

Another family remembrance came from Sister Jean Irene’s sister Kay, who recalled that her big
sister loved to tease her:

      Even up until a couple of years ago she said I was favored because our parents took
      me to the Chicago Fair and left her home with Grandma. She always omitted that it
      would be six months before I was born. … I will forever miss our back and forth funny
      squabbles and the best and loving sister.

Associate Trudy McSorley preached the homily for Sister Jean Irene’s funeral, before Sister was laid
to rest among those in her much-loved Congregation who had gone before her:

      Jean’s simple, unassuming ways held a heart that was open to all. She cherished,
      valued and was so faithful to all her relationships in family, ministry and community.

      Relationships mattered – as Sisters moved to Adrian or their health would fail or a Sister
      would die, she would REMEMBER in a way in which many years ago we came together
      to Re-Member. To keep present to herself what that Sister’s relationship meant to her,
      and gently, with great love, turn them back to God.

      … Jean’s lightness of heart brought us great joy, but deep within was the soul of a
      woman whose deepest longing was with her God whose Presence was most immediate
      when she reflected on this planet, this beautiful earth community she so loved – the
      trees, flowers, grass, air, sky, snow, colors of seasons, water, animals, all, ALL of it,
      where she was most at home with her God. Inside her room here at Maria she would
      draw back the curtain and sing and dance “The Lord of the Dance”! This filled her heart
      and she was at home with her God.

      And so we remember, dearest Jean, your prayer is now our prayer for you: Shepherd
      her O God, beyond her wants, beyond her fears, from death into life.

Center: Audrey, the future Sister Jean Irene, on her First Holy Communion day with her younger sister, Catherine (Kay)

                      Left: Sister Jean Irene with her parents, Daniel and Genevieve McAllister.
                               Center: Blood sisters Kay and Sister Jean Irene McAllister

Right: Front row, from left, Sisters Sheila Flynn and Jean Irene McAllister and back row from left, Sisters Therese Groulx
                 and Barbara Wetterer pose at Cave of the Winds, Niagara Falls, New York, June 1991.

Left: Members of the Central Florida Mission Group are: standing, from left, Sisters Mary Miday, Patricia Caulfield, Cora
 Marie Campbell, Donna Baker, Clarice Moyle, Mary DeVault, Marie Skebe, Rosemary Thomas Finnegan, Mary Diane
McMeekin, and Jean Irene McAllister; and seated, from left, Sisters Sara Fairbanks, Julia McCarthy, Mary Ann Caulfield,
                                                  and Ann Englert.