Sister Mary Jean ND 5296 PDF Download
(formerly Sister Mary Aloysius)
Mary Jean KOREJWO
Christ the King Province, Chardon, Ohio, USA
Date and Place of Birth: June 27, 1937 Elyria, Ohio
Date and Place of Profession: August 16, 1960 Cleveland, Ohio
Date and Place of Death: April 24, 2020 Health Care Center, Chardon, Ohio
Date and Place of Burial: April 29, 2020 Resurrection Cemetery, Chardon, Ohio
“Silver and gold I have none…but what I have – I give.”
Mary Jean was born a triplet. Her infant brothers, John and James, went home to heaven two days after birth; Mary Jean went home to her parents, Edward and Eleanor (James) Korejwo, two months later. She and a little brother grew up in Lorain, Ohio, where she attended Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary elementary school and then Lorain High School. Mary Jean graduated as an honor student in 1955, entered Notre Dame College in South Euclid, Ohio, and began employment at the Fisher Food Company. She appreciated working for and with older people and she loved her days as one of the first college dorm students. During these years, she observed that the sisters lived their core belief that God is good – leading to her own experience of God’s goodness and responding to her own vocation. Mary Jean entered the Sisters of Notre Dame on September 8, 1957, and at investment received the name Sister Mary Aloysius.
Although she had planned to become a teacher of business and music, Sister was asked to continue her studies in biology and math because the need was so great. Sister Mary Jean earned a bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame College and a master’s degree from John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio. She loved teaching, was dedicated, organized and well prepared; she helped her students not only to master subject matter but to recognize and be grateful for the gifts they had been given. A new area of ministry, technology and computer science, opened a new avenue as she became proficient in teaching students and colleagues.
After ministering for thirty-four years at high schools in Ohio, including twenty-one years at John F. Kennedy High School in Warren, Sister Mary Jean was assigned to Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1994. For the next twenty-five years she ministered in the school and the wider Raleigh community. First as teacher and then as administrative assistant in the Development and Business/Admissions Offices, Sister continued to be a witness to God’s goodness. She relished her ministry as secretary and web liaison for the Diocesan Council of Women Religious. She was a good facilitator, observant to others’ needs and worked in the background to bring projects to completion. Living with chronic pain did not diminish her outreach to others with a generous heart.
Sister Mary Jean anticipated her Diamond Jubilee with great joy. Celebrating with her Cardinal Gibbons family was a treasured memory she held in these past months. In February, Sister experienced a fall and suffered from its long-term complications. This necessitated a move to Chardon. Though we are saddened by her unexpected death, her own words console and inspire us: “The secret to love of ministry is in the striving to make a difference in someone’s life each day by a word, a deed, or just a smile, to remind them that God is good and they are good! It is not what I do, but my interaction with truly wonderful people that makes life worth living. There is no better ministry than that!” May Sister Mary Jean rest in the arms of our good God.
by Dreamhost