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Note: DOWNEY, JEAN G. NURSE, ARTIST, FEMINIST of Groton, MA, died of cancer in her home. She was 78. A graduate of the Cadet Nurse Corps government program established to promote essential nursing during World War II, Ms. Downey earned her R. N. degree at Indiana University and pursued a psychiatric nursing internship at the Institute of Living in Hartford, CT. On June 30, 1946, she married the Rev. George E. Downey, ordained minister of the Disciples of Christ denomination. In 1949, the couple, with their first of five children, moved to tiny, coastal Belhaven, NC where Rev. Downey was called to the pulpit. Thus began over fifty years of shared ministry within the Disciples of Christ, United Church of Christ and Unitarian denominations. The growing family moved to Tennessee in 1957, where Rev. Downey accepted the statewide position of Director of Christian Education, which included directorship of summer church programs at Bethany Hills campground in Kingston Springs, TN. Here, Ms. Downey filled the positions of Camp Nurse and dietician through the mid-1960's. 1967 brought the family's relocation to Westford MA followed by Rev. Downey's acceptance of the pulpit at First Parish Church United (1970-1991). Upon retirement, the Downeys moved to Groton, Massachusetts and joined the First Parish Church of Groton, Unitarian Universalist. Ms. Downey was fully committed to the personal stand against injustice and inequity, and exemplified the individual's transforming impact. She adopted a patient/resident at the Cloverbottom Mental Facility in Nashville through a Christian Women's Fellowship outreach initiative; the family served as AFS host family to the late Jon Miria (one of the first AFS students from Papua, New Guinea). Ms. Downey served for many years on the Human Services Committee in Westford. In 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and inspired by an appeal in the Boston Globe, Ms. Downey began an over 30-year membership in the Mississippi Box Project - supporting two families in North Carolina and Mississippi with monthly "Boxes" (shipments) of food, staples, and often, clothing made by her own hand. In the late 1960's, she joined the "Another Mother for Peace" organization, and was an original subscriber to the breakthrough "Ms." Magazine in 1972. An expert seamstress, she created the Meetinghouse square for the 250th Westford Anniversary Quilt in 1979, and embroidered an unique Author Autograph Quilt as a fund-raiser for the J. V. Fletcher Library, Westford. She could copy a designer pattern from sight, and won two awards in the only Cooking Contest she ever entered. She was a tRained pianist and violinist and pursued and supported music throughout her life; an author and researcher, she penned an annual Holiday Letter long before the practice became widespread. A founder of the Westford Women's Rap group, she maintained warm friendships, confidences and connections for three decades of life-altering events with its members. Jean maintained that she was proudest of the Westford Women Remembered Doll project, begun as a fund raiser with other needlewomen of First Parish Church United in Westford in 1985. Together, over a five-year period, they created 56 doll likenesses of 12 historic Westford women. Dressed in vintage fabrics, these dolls represented historic personalities that included a Colonial slave, a Shaker Eldress, a mill worker and a world-renowned geneticist and spanned the 18th to the 20th century. Ms. Downey researched and wrote biographical papers for all twelve women, and credited the project with launching the study of Westford women within the formal Westford school program. A complete set of dolls commemorating these remarkable Westfordians resides in the Westford Museum; Ms. Downey's writings are catalogued in the J. V. Fletcher Library collection. After attending a Shaker-like meeting in the Westford First Parish Church United, the Downeys made their first of many visits to the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake, Maine, ultimately joining the Friends of Sabbathday Lake and serving on the Executive Board. Ms. Downey de-constructed a traditional Shaker dress to furnish a basic pattern and began sewing "traditional" Shaker dresses for the Sisters of the community. This launched years of a warm friendship and support on behalf of the community. Upon joining the First Parish Church in Groton, Jean joined the Caring Committee and later helped spearhead the Welcoming Committee of the church. In all of her church and organizational affiliations, she embodied "Caring." A member of the League of Women Voters, the Friends of the J. V. Fletcher and the Groton libraries, she cited the heroism of older women as a reason for joining the Westford Book and Thimble Club, and shared that she joined the Groton Women's Alliance "so [she] could learn to grow old." Her immediate, sensible and pragmatic grasp of the solution to any problem inspired an elderly Brahmin neighbor to liken her to "the Lady from Philadelphia." Her husband George, considering her activism on women's issues, characterized her as "a feminist in velvet gloves." Beyond her prodigious interests, talents and energies, the overwhelming personal memory of Jean Downey is one of an empathic, intelligent and attentive presence, bringing consolation, humor, warm wisdom, companionship and often, home-cooked food. Credited as a Co-Minister with her husband of 57 years, she is survived by the Rev. George E. Downey of Groton MA, and siblings Alice Jane Logan, and Martha Locke of Indiana, and Ernest Grubb of Hendersonville, NC. She leaves children Gregg and Joyce Downey and grand-daughters Leah and Kala of Clarksville, TN; Douglas Downey of Rye, NH; Ellen and Noel Rainville of Westford, MA; Marsha Downey and Rob Lyons of Littleton, MA, and; Neil Downey of Westford, MA. A Memorial Service will be held December 6 at First Parish Church of Groton, Unitarian Universalist. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to The Box Project, P. O. Box 435, Plainville, CT 06062, www.boxproject.org.
Badger Funeral Home: Landmark Groton Herald Westford Eagle Boston Globe
Family: Indiana Univ. Alumnae TN Christian newsletter Clara Barton UU district Rev. Elea Kimler
**************************************************************************************************************** The Interment of Ashes of Jean Downey Friday, December 5, 2003 Fairview Cemetery Westford, Massachusetts
Opening Words
Welcome friends and family. We have gathered here on this cold, wintry afternoon to begin to say our goodbyes to Jean Downey and to bury her ashes in the beautiful earth.
Jean died peacefully on Thursday, November 27. She died in the early hours of the new day, surrounded by loved ones. Jean was beloved. She was a wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, aunt, great-aunt, daughter, sister, nurse, teacher, and a dear friend to many, many people. She will be missed very much. We will continue to remember her and to celebrate her remarkable life tomorrow at First Parish Church in Groton but, for now, we gather in this beautiful New England landscape, which Jean loved, in the town where George and Jean spent so many years, to return Jean's body to the earth.
Jean was born an Indiana farm girl and all her life she loved the outdoors. She found peace and spirituality in the natural world. These words are from the 65th and talks about God's sure presence in the beauty of creation:
You make the outgoings of the morning and the evening to shout for joy. You visit the earth, watering it, making it very rich. The great river swells with water, filling the ridges, blessing the growth of rain. You crown the year with your abundance. The pastures are perfumed with dew. The hills deck themselves with joy. The meadows adorn themselves with flocks The valleys gown themselves with grain. They shout for joy; they join in song.
And these words are a prayer from the Navajo Indians of North America. I think they speak to how Jean saw the world around her:
Beauty is before me and beauty is behind me. Above me and below me hovers the beautiful.
I am surrounded by it, I am immersed in it. In my youth, I am aware of it, And, in my old age, I shall walk quietly the beautiful trail. In beauty, it is begun. In beauty, it is ended. In beauty, it is ended.
Placement of Ashes and Objects
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Life begins and ends in beauty and in mystery. We are blessed to be part of the great circle of life and death even as we feel the incredible sadness and grief of having to say goodbye to one we love.
We now commit the ashes of Jean's body into the ground of our mother earth, even as we know her strong, shining spirit will live on in the memories of all who loved her. (George places ashes).
Jean's granddaughters, Leah and Kala, whom she loved so much, have brought some of nature's beauty to lay to rest with Jean. They have brought shaker apples and evergreen boughs.
Prayer
On Thanksgiving Day, the day Jean died, her family prepared her traditional Thanksgiving meal in her honor and toasted her with these words: Let us be thankful for the beautiful life that Jean gave us." Let us now join together in the spirit of prayer to give thanks for Jean's beautiful life:
Eternal spirit of love, healer of the broken-hearted, binder of all our wounds, Be with us in this time of grief, Move through us that we might find strength and healing, Give us courage to grieve deeply and courage to believe in the goodness of life even in the midst of sadness. We give thanks for the life of Jean Downey. We give thanks for her 78 years among us - even as we wish there were many more years, let us be grateful that Jean lived. We give thanks for Jean's compassion, for her love for fairness and justice, for her faithfulness as a wife and mother and grandmother and friend, for her kindness, for her many gifts, for her generosity, for her huge, wide open selfless heart. Spirit of peace, bring healing and comfort to all who are grieving. We pray in hope, remember that the mystery of life and death is beyond our understanding, but believing and trusting that Jean's spirit is at peace and knowing that she will not be forgotten. Amen.
Closing Words
The closing words are by Gabriel Horn. He writes: When we are born, it's like taking a cup of spirit out of the pool of life that the Mystery provides. We must pour that cup back in when we die, like a drop of rain that falls back into the ocean where it came from, except that the drop of spirit we take into this world should increase in size… That way, we put back more than we came in with. The key...is to fill our cups with goodness. So, when we die, all that goodness pours back into the Mystery and into those we love.
Jean's cup was full to overflowing with goodness. And Like a drop of rain back into the ocean, Jean has returned from whence she came but her spirit lives on in those who loved her.
And now may the courage of the early morning's dawning, And the strength of the eternal hills, And the peace of the evening's ending And the love of God be in your hearts.
In the spirit of love we have gathered. In the spirit of love let us now go in peace. (Congregation is invited to lay a bit of ever green into the grave as they leave.)
**************************************************************************************************************** A Celebration of the Life of Jean Downey Saturday, December 6, 2003 First Parish Church of Groton
Now, I, old willow tree from which the birds have fled, through whose branches the sap no longer rises, leave my own vacancy on the waiting air. Peggy Pond Church
A great soul serves everyone all the time. A great soul never dies. It brings us together again and again. Maya Angelou
Prelude Chorale from Cantata 147
Welcome and Announcements Alice VanOrmer, Senior Deacon, First Parish Church
Chalice Lighting Leah and Kala Downey
Minister: Welcome Family and Friends. Let us begin this service of remembrance and celebration by lighting the chalice, the symbol of Unitarian Universalism. Jean and George's granddaughters, Leah Downey and Kala Downey will light the chalice.
Leah: In a time of loss, we light a flame of on-going life. May this flame remind us of how brightly shone the life of our grandmother, Jean Downey.
Kala: May this flame remind us that we believe in the beauty of life, even in the midst of sorrow. May this flame remind us that we are here to celebrate a life well lived.
Hymn Here We Have Gathered #360
Words for Gathering
Robert Weston writes these words:
Out of the stars in their flight, out of the dust of eternity, here have we come - star dust and sunlight mingling through time and space. For eons there was only empty space, chaos and no order. The sun was unborn, the earth ungathered, humans unanticipated. Then out of the chaos came order. Out of emptiness came form. Stars appeared in the overarching dome and created pathways for themselves. A pattern appeared, a sign of the emerging universe, great circular orbits and finally, people. Out of the stars in their flight, out of the dust of eternity, here have we come - star dust and sunlight mingling through time and space. This is the marvel of our humanity, rising to see and to know. Out of your heart cry wonder, sing that we live.
When a person dies, family and friends gather to find comfort in each other. When loss comes to us, we need one another's company. We need to sit together, to laugh and cry together, to remember together. We need to see one another's faces. We have been gathered into community today for such a reason. We have been gathered by the death of Jean Downey. Jean died on Thursday, November 27, Thanksgiving Day very early in the morning. She was at home and George was with her when she died, as were Ellen and Noel, Marsha and Rob, Doug and Neil.
As you know, Jean was diagnosed with advanced cancer just three months ago at the end of August. Her illness was a surprise and her death happened sooner than any of us quite expected I think. Nonetheless, Jean brought to her last days the same kind of grace that she brought to her life. She and George were so thoughtful about the decisions they made. Jean had good nursing care and pain management through Hospice as well as the loving support of George, of her children and many friends. Family and friends were able to come for goodbye visits. While we hoped that there were would be more time, Jean did have a chance to say goodbye. Jean was 78 years old. Her life was full.
Jean is survived by her husband of 57 years, George; her two sisters, Alice Jane and Martha; her brother, Ernest; her five children Gregg, Ellen, Marsha, Doug and Neil; her daughter and sons-in-law, Joyce, Noel and Rob; her granddaughters Leah and Kala as well as her nieces and nephews, and great nieces and great nephews and her many, many friends.
So we have come to grieve, to remember a life well lived, to express our care and support for Jean's family, and also to celebrate Jean's extraordinary spirit. It is right that we come together this day because human life is sacred. It is sacred in its being born. It is sacred in its living and it is sacred in its dying.
************************** Readings
The readings for today's service come from Jean's journals. Jean loved history, especially women's history and she kept her own history through the journals she wrote throughout her life beginning when she was a teenager. Her journals were about the every day events of her life, the work she did, the weather. Her last journal entry, written on August 12 after she had recovered from her cataract surgery this summer was: hung laundry out this morning for the first time in days and days. Her journals were also full of poems and readings and quotes that she had heard or read and found to be moving. Ellen and Marsha looked through Jean's journals and chose several that they thought might be especially right to read today. The first reading, Tea by Susan Donnelly, is about friendship between women and it is also about dying. Jean put it into her journal in October, 1990.
Tea by Susan Donnelly
When I see you today, we won't talk of death although it will be everywhere - in your face, your slowed voice your hands with their silver rings. We won't talk of love, just touch for a moment, then a slight sideways kiss as we each speak at the same time. We won't talk of how I already miss you, my heart has positioned all its guards. Or how, because I am stupid with health, you must hate me sometimes. Instead we will sit at your round kitchen table, the skinny cat sliding against our chairs. We'll drink tea from blue-patterned china cups that don't match. And let the leaves fall, in their own randomness, into the brown pond. Let them be birds mating. Or many children. Or the great wave that signifies a journey.
And the second reading is by one of Jean's favorite writers, Maya Angelou. This is from Maya Angelou's Wellesley College Graduation Speech. Jean copied into her journal on June 4, 1982.
Courage is your greatest achievement. Courage is the greatest of all the virtues. For without courage you cannot practice any of the other virtues with consistency. I believe women are phenomenal. I know us to be. I know men are phenomenal too. But I tell you this - you will have to write your own poems. Reflections on the Life of Jean Downey
I am going to tell you just a little bit about Jean's life as I learned about it from George, Ellen, Marsha and Neil. It is impossible to fully tell the story of anyone's life, and especially a life so rich as Jean's. My hope is to just begin, to give you some of the facts of Jean's life and let those of you who knew her well and loved her deeply fill in the rest with your own stories and memories.
Jean was born on April 4, 1925 and her full name was Clara Jean Grubb. She never used the Clara part of her name, nor did her family and when she was sixteen and went to apply for her Social Security Card she later rued the fact that the she gave them her full name, Clara Jean, because the name stayed with her on official forms throughout the rest of her life. Jean was born in Rock Lane, a tiny rural village of about 75 people in Johnson County, Indiana. She was the oldest of four children born to Burris and Leta Grubb. Her brother Ernest and her sisters Alice Jane and Martha are all still alive and were able to visit with her this summer. Jean grew up surrounded by family - her grandparents, aunts and cousins all lived nearby. Jean's parents were farmers and her love of nature and her close connection to the land and the seasons and the weather was part of her all of her life. 4H was a big part of Jean and her siblings childhood. She was an excellent student at the tiny village school and her mother taught her to be a seamstress early on in life.
George Downey was also a part of Jean's life from early on as he and his family were some of those 75 people who lived in Rock Lane, at one point George's family even lived across the road from Jean's. Jean was one grade behind George in school and he remembers her as smart and beautiful. Jean and George were both leaders in the youth group at Rock Lane Christian Church. She was musical - she was a violinist and pianist and played the piano at church and she and her siblings were part of the country 4H band, which won a championship in the state fair. George remembers that he first asked Jean on a date to a movie when he was a junior in high school and she was a sophomore. The next year he asked her to the senior-junior dance but he waited until the last minute to ask her so she barely had time to make a dress. But she said yes and she and her mother flew into action sewing.
Jean earned her Registered Nursing degree at Indiana University and joined the Cadet Nurse Corps, a government program established to promote nursing during World War II. George and Jean were married on June 30, 1946 in their little country church. Two months later, George was ordained there as a Disciples of Christ minister and both Jean and George knelt together for the ordination prayer - such was the beginning of their partnership through the long years of George's ministry because, of course, Jean was a minister too in the ministry of caring for the members of the congregations they were later to serve. George and Jean spent the first year of their marriage apart while she finished her nurse's training with a specialty in psychiatric nursing in Hartford, CT while George went off to seminary in Lexington, KY. But once she graduated, she joined George in Lexington and they were never apart for any significant amount of time again in the 57 years of their marriage.
The family, which now included the oldest child Gregg, moved from their first church in the little coastal town of Belhaven to Tennessee where George became the state wide director of Christian Education. This job included running church programs at Bethany Hills camp ground where Jean became the camp nurse. Over the following years four more children were born, Ellen, Marsha, Doug and Neil and Jean remembered those camp summers with fondness but also told me recently how she had to wash all the kids diapers outside before they got a washing machine. Marsha, Ellen and Neil told me that Jean was a protective, caring mother who was always teaching them and was accepting of their individuality. She was supportive of their creativity and encouraged learning -helping them research whatever they were interested in. She and George were careful and frugal with money but there were certain things it was okay to spend money on: books, musical instruments, fabric, art supplies, wood for building and good shoes. Marsha said of her mother, "She was our northern star. After spending time with her, I felt calm and had my perspective realigned." George and Jean were involved in civil rights and race relations before there were movements for these things. To extend herself to others, especially others whose rights were denied or who were in need, was simply part of who Jean was. Jean and George worked to integrate the summer church camp and conference programs. In a 1986 interview about her life with Darlene Kohler, Jean remembered when George extended a dinner invitation to a friend and classmate from Butler University, an African American minister who visited Belhaven. George and Jean invited him to dinner and he brought along another local African American minister. Jean says that she didn't think of it as any big deal that she served them dinner and she served local crab and Scuppernong pie for dessert, made from the beautiful big white grapes that grew naturally in the part of the country. The other minister, whose name was Rev. Sir Walter Raleigh Keyes responded, "I've lived here all my life and I've never eaten these things." When the deacons of the church heard that the Downey's had had black people to dinner, they came to check because they didn't believe it. Jean said, "We heard there was some movement to ask George to leave the church on that account. But nothing ever came of it." Jean was an ardent advocate for fairness and justice for all people and in this she was almost always ahead of her time. She joined the group Another Mother for Peace in the 1960's and was an original subscriber to Ms Magazine in 1972, the country's first national feminist magazine.
The family moved to Westford in 1967 and George became minister of First Parish Church United, a congregation they served for 21 years. During her years in Westford, several projects and passions became extremely important to Jean The Box Project to fight poverty in rural Mississippi became one such passion. The Box Project, according to Jean's old friends Beatrice Masur and Margaret Judd, who shared this worked with her, is a way to offer practical help. Jean was matched with two families in need in Mississippi and for years sent them boxes of food, supplies and clothing. Jean also designed and sewed beautiful Caftans for the women of the family.
Margaret Judd writes, "Some years ago, Jean and I become aware that there were women in Mississippi making quilts with the hope of selling them. We decided that we could try to help them so they sent the quilts up here. We advertised in the free ads and sold about 40 quilts, sending off more than $1,000 to their makers." Beatrice and Margaret plan to continue their support and friendship with Levonne and Pamela, the two women and their families that Jean was supporting, and two boxes are on their way to Mississippi now. About her involvement in the Box Project, Jean told Darlene Kohler that she stayed involved simply because "I want these women to know that there is a woman who cares whether they have a new dress, whether their children are hungry."
Westford Women Remembered Doll Project, which began as a fund raiser for the church in 1985, was another of Jean's passions. Over a five year period Jean and other seamstresses in the church created 56 dolls of 12 different historic Westford women, each dressed in vintage fabrics and historically accurate clothing. Jean meticulously researched and wrote biographical papers for all 12 women and this project launched the study of Westford women within the Westford school curriculum. George tells me that now Jean will become the 13th Westford Woman Remembered and a doll will be created in her likeness.
Her other passion was her connection with the Shaker Community at Sabbathdaylake, Maine. Jean and George joined the Friends of Sabbathdaylake and served on the Executive Board and came to be dear friends with the members of the community. When Jean noticed that the Shaker women didn't have time to sew for themselves, she deconstructed a traditional Shaker dress so she could create a pattern for it and began sewing the Shakers dresses while George created Shaker wood crafts for the gift shop. Jean told Darlene Kohler, "That's the kind of work I really enjoy. Sister Frances Carr wore two of my dresses at a Smithsonian seminar on Shaker textiles held in Los Angeles. I like to feel I have a small historic part in helping to keep Shakerism alive." The Shakers came to visit her recently when they were waiting for their new calves to be born and Jean was eager to hear whether all had gone well. She was glad to learn that two healthy new calves had come soon after the visit.
Jean wrote her journals as well as an annual holiday letter to record the events and happenings of her family's life. She liked to keep track of people and events and stay connected. She was a disciplined and prolific letter writer and kept in close touch with her granddaughters, siblings and many friends In addition to her gifts as a seamstress, Jean was a quilter, a passion and talent she shared with her daughter Marsha. She collected fabrics from generations of her family and made autograph quilts for Leah and Kala with the signatures of family members, many of whom are now gone. Marsha will finish the quilts for them.
When George and Jean retired and moved to the house they had built in Groton and joined First Parish, our congregation was deeply blessed. Jean sang in the choir, led the Caring Committee and the Alliance and was a vocal, passionate supporter of the Welcoming Congregation Committee. She seemed to know everyone, remembered the details of everyone's lives, and cared about those details. She delivered soup and flowers and wrote cards and welcomed the visitors and newcomers and organized the rest of us. She loved to send clippings and articles and recipes and cooking advice. Jean hated intolerance and small-mindedness and waste and insensitivity of any kind.
Her children and George say that, like the plants she so carefully tended and kept for years, she kept blooming and became more confident, more outspoken, more and more herself as she got older. She saw her sewing and quilting, her service to others and her work for justice and fairness as sacred acts. These things, along with her love of nature and her understanding that she was part of the natural world, were important parts of her spirituality. She had deep faith in life, in the beauty of the world and in the possibility for each person to make a difference. Jean said she joined the Alliance so she could "learn how to grow old" as she put it and so she did with strength, grace, humor and deep kindness.
Anthem Requiem Aeternum by John Rutter The Adult Choir
Reflections from the Congregation
There is some time now for those who wish to share a story, a memory, to say a few words about how Jean touched your life. Please keep your reflections brief so that all who wish to share might have a chance to speak. If we don't have time for everyone who wishes to speak today or if you simply are not a public speaker, I encourage you to write down your reflections and send them to Jean's family. So I invite you to come forward and speak from the lectern and simply begin by telling us who you are.
(After reflections) Your memories of Jean are gifts she gave to you. We have only begun remembering her life her today.
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