JEAN MCKEIGUE

1946 - 2022

McKEIGUE, Jean (Sullivan) Determined Bridge-Builder for Education, Community, and Family With a gentle smile on her face, Jean Sullivan McKeigue passed away on February 4, 2022, at her home in West Palm Beach, surrounded by her beloved family. Jeanie was born on March 6, 1946, at the Chelsea Naval Hospital. The third of six children born to Mary Malone Sullivan and William "Billy" Sullivan, Jeanie and her tight-knit family were raised on Bay State Road in Wellesley, MA. As a teenager, while working at Brown & Nichols day camp, she met fellow counselor Joe McKeigue—who quickly became her high school sweetheart, then her lifelong love. Jeanie received her Bachelor's degree in history in 1968 from Newton College of the Sacred Heart. She and Joe married at St. John's Church in Wellesley in 1968. From there, she began her long career of creating opportunities for children, initially as a teacher in a public school on the West Side of Chicago. She spent the subsequent decades engaging with students, parents, and neighborhoods in New York and Boston, tirelessly working to enhance family and community involvement in local schools. From 1971-1976, she and Joe lived on 121st Street in New York, raising a boisterous young family of four and managing to forge lasting friendships while attending Columbia University's Teacher's College. Along the way, Jeanie earned her first Master's degree in early childhood education, in 1974, (showing early signs of her pluck and resolve by attending graduation shortly before taking the bus to the hospital to give birth to their third child, Michael). The McKeigues returned to make Boston their home base and settled down in Jamaica Plain, quickly becoming foundational to the neighborhood and developing a reputation as generous hosts and successful embodiments of a work-hard; play-hard ethos. While always placing family first, Jeanie also applied her driving traits of compassion, sensitivity, and perseverance into her professional endeavors. As a result, she was elected to the Boston School Committee from 1980-84, garnering enough admiration and support that she was made vice-president in 1981 and president in 1982. During her active tenure, which coincided with an exceptionally challenging era for education in Boston, Jeanie successfully negotiated with more than a dozen unions, initiated several lasting reforms, and worked with community organizations to promote collaboration with the public schools. She never concealed her boundless store of kindness and warmth, exuding an approachable and receptive persona. Simultaneously, she refused to indulge expressions of baseless negativity or acts of petty intolerance. Gentle but tough; sweet but never a pushover—these seeming contradictions are what made Jeanie such a delight to be around, while also enabling her to take care of business. After her tenure with the School Committee, she returned to her studies and earned an additional Master's degree as a fellow at MlT's Sloan School of Management. She applied her growing awareness of the machinations of organizations to help her serve as a reliable bridge and moderator among diverse people, positions, and programs. Over the course of her career, she helped to advance an impressive range of organizations and committees, whether she was contributing to the National Alliance of Business, the Cultural Education Collaborative, School Volunteers for Boston, or serving as the clerk of the board for the then-family run New England Patriots. She conversed confidently with state legislators, leaders in every kind of neighborhood, football administrators, parents, and students of every age. Each person she encountered was treated with respect and attentiveness, which is among the reasons she was both a cherished and an effective colleague. Such qualities made her a prime choice as director of Boston College's Office of Community Affairs, where she became the primary liaison between the University and its neighboring communities, in 1988. With her decades of experience, Jeanie had all the tools necessary to establish, cultivate, and nurture new bonds among the University and its surrounding neighborhoods. Jeanie always provided a reasoned perspective, made palatable to all sides by her gentle charisma and predisposition toward building connections. She deftly navigated more than two dozen associations and initiated several programs for children within the community, including Read Aloud, and the partnership with the Gardner School. She spearheaded countless events on campus, including organizing the Boston College Community Arts Festival, always bringing disparate people together. Her temperament and training kept her on course to constantly boost morale and promote the spirit of community. Her exceptional contributions to Boston and its standards of progressive education, as well as to myriad communities across multiple cities, established her legacy as an indomitable force. But the true measure of her strength, resilience, dignity, and courage was revealed most potently beginning in 2004, when she was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma, stage 4. Despite a devastating prognosis and forecast of an intensely challenging road forward, Jeanie demonstrated her unflagging optimism from the start, making evident her fierce will, not merely to survive, but to live. For the subsequent almost 18 years, she astonished medical professionals and loved ones alike with her repeated refusal to relent to either her illness or to the multiple treatments she underwent to battle it. She showed a rare breed of courage in the way she took in stride years of tests, chemotherapy treatments, and risky procedures. On the extremely rare occasions when her positivity dipped or her exhaustion seemed close to overtaking her, she was buoyed and kept afloat by the indescribable devotion of her husband of 54 years, Dr. Joe McKeigue, who managed her care with next-level attentiveness and unwavering love, and who was literally by her side for the rest of her life. And if ever he needed an extra hand to make lemonade out of the lemons of those years, he and Jeanie knew they could count on the many hands and support of their children, grandchildren, siblings, and extended family. Which is not to suggest that the years following the diagnosis were bleak—just the opposite. They were years of tremendous joy, celebration, milestone moments, and fun, as Jeanie and Joe kept themselves busy with the aspects of living that brought them the greatest pleasure and pride. Nothing did so more profoundly than time spent with their four loving children: Patrick, Heather, Michael, and Joanna. With great pride and well-documented delight, the McKeigues joyfully welcomed their children's spouses—Sandra, Kevin, Kris, and Justin—into the family. In time, twelve grandchildren, Jackson McKeigue, Olivia McKeigue, Patrick McKeigue, Jr., Finn McKeon, Teddy McKeigue, Amy McKeigue, Addie McKeon, Cecilia McKeigue, Libby McKeigue, Georgia McKeigue, Brayden Cruz, and Colin Cruz, would join the brood, serving as infusions of joy. Grandpa and Nini were integral figures in helping raise each one of the grandchildren—with Nini instilling in them values of tenderness that they would later reflect back whenever they engaged with her. They shared priceless experiences when the whole McKeigue crew holidayed together or when they joined Jean's siblings, Chuck Sullivan, Kathleen Sullivan Alioto, Nancie (Miceal) Chamberlain, Billy (Maureen) Sullivan, Pat (Lynne) Sullivan, and countless nieces and nephews at the family home in Cotuit. Family was well-established as their priority, but their massive network of friends was a close second. Jeanie and Joe remained tenaciously social, placing great emphasis and time on maintaining the relationships and varied groups they had developed at each stage of their life. Frequent traveling expeditions, rowdy reunions, and sundry events were always on the calendar, and Jeanie consistently exhibited an unmatched determination to rise to each occasion, and to do so with a smile—no matter what she was battling behind-the-scenes. She was not merely an incredible trooper, a fighter, and a good sport (though she was all of those things). She loved to party, never failing to bring her upbeat and caring spirit to the multiple occasions that Joe put on their schedule. She brought along a contagious sense of light, kindness, intelligence, and curiosity. On the Cape, she maintained her decades-long prioritization of the children in the room, giving time, gifts, sweetness, and encouragement to each one. While Cotuit gave her rejuvenating access to the extended family of Sullivans, and her time in Jamaica Plain brought much familiarity and the opportunity to share their notable enthusiasm for celebrating holidays with fervor, she found great peace and the opportunity to rest, relax, and often recover in West Palm Beach. Come winter, Jeanie and Joe would drive down to Florida, where they refueled in the sun while enjoying some of their favorite activities: devouring books, swimming laps, running, golf, meeting up with friends, receiving visitors, and—during her life—enjoying quality time living within the same complex as Jeanie's mother. For nearly two decades she was given extraordinary care at Dana Farber and Brigham and Women's, with doctors and staff that remained steadfast in the collective effort to keep Jeanie as healthy as possible. But it would be impossible to overstate the power of her own resilience. Eleanor Roosevelt believed "you can often change your circumstance by changing your attitude." Nobody proved that with more grace than Jean Sullivan McKeigue, whose positive, expansive, light-filled spirit will be profoundly missed—but will forever remain within the hearts of the very many lives she touched. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Funeral Services and Interment will be private. In that spirit, an in-person Celebration of Jeanie's Life for all of her friends and family will be held in the spring of 2022. Details will be announced separately. Arrangements are under the care and direction of the P.E. Murray - F.J. Higgins - George F. Doherty & Sons Funeral Home, 2000 Centre Street, WEST ROXBURY. In lieu of flowers, expressions of sympathy may be made in Jeanie's memory to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute by visiting www.dana-farber.org To sign an online guestbook, please visit www.pemurrayfuneral.com P.E. Murray - F.J. Higgins George F. Doherty & Sons West Roxbury 617-325-2000 www.pemurrayfuneral.com