By Lauren FitzPatrick
Staff writer
As a young man, John Joseph O’Keefe answered a call to love and serve the Lord.
Then after many years as a Servite priest, he heard it again, only this time his call would lead him in a more personal direction.
“Marrying my mom and having all of us was kind of a continuation of his ministry, just in a different way,” said Bernadette O’Keefe, one of his 15 children. “It was his way to show his faith and belief in God and in the beauty of life.”
The longtime Beverly resident, father and former priest died Jan. 5 of renal failure after a long illness. He was 83.
Born on the feast of St. Joseph, March 19, 1921, in Chicago’s Irving Park community, Mr. O’Keefe grew up on the North Side amid many cousins.
He was the son of an Irish couple who met in America after emigrating around the turn of the century. They set down strong Catholic roots that they passed on to their four children.
For John Joseph, his path was an easy choice.
“I wanted to be a priest when I was very, very young,” he told his daughter Siobhan Summers in an interview she videotaped three years ago.
After graduating from St. Philip High School on Chicago’s West Side, he entered the seminary of the Servites, the Servants of Mary, outside Milwaukee. They sent him back to his alma mater as a Latin teacher as part of 10 years of training before ordination.
The order moved the young Rev. O’Keefe all around, to Oregon, Missouri, Michigan and several years in Northern Ireland before assigning him to be a campus chaplain at a California university.
There, in 1967, he met a black-haired woman 20 years his junior who always brought her seven children to Mass.
Well-versed in Latin literature, he found himself recalling a line from the epic poem “The Aeneid” whenever he saw her:
“And, by her graceful walk, the Queen of Love is known.”
“It was a love story,” he told his daughter Siobhan. “I didn’t realize it at the time — I was falling in love with your mother. And I didn’t know if she was with me.”
The radically changing Catholic Church of the late 1960s began granting priests dispensation to marry. They would have to leave the priesthood, but their marriages would be recognized by the church. So Mr. O’Keefe resigned in 1970, while Diane, who was divorced, packed her brood up for Chicago, where they would settle.
“She got off the train with seven kids and said, ‘Where do we go now?’ ” he told Siobhan.
They married in 1971, first before a judge and then at St. John Fisher Church in Beverly.
He loved the children so dearly, he and Diane set themselves on having eight more.
But it wasn’t simple. His family and his order were initially upset about his decision.
“It was slightly scandalous because he left the priesthood to marry her,” Bernadette O’Keefe said.
Mr. O’Keefe taught in Chicago Public Schools after he married and then took a job with Head Start, where he was a program officer for nearly 25 years.
He retired Jan. 31, 1999, during the era of the Y2K scare, so of course there was a joke, O’Keefe said.
“If the world did come to an end, it was because John O’Keefe stopped working,” he told his family.
“He told bad Irish jokes, but they were the funniest thing coming out of his mouth,” Bernadette O’Keefe said.
Besides the jokes he picked up from his father and grandfather, Mr. O’Keefe had a store of Irish witticisms he liked to toss about in everyday parlance.
“You’re looking good for yourself,” he’d tell a visitor.
He loved the literature of James Joyce, and though he admitted he didn’t quite understand it all, he would quote Joyce when asked about the Catholic Church.
“Here comes everybody,” he would cite, explaining, “It means you got to forgive everyone, and they have to forgive you.”
Deeply religious throughout his entire life, Mr. O’Keefe remained committed to the Catholic faith his parents instilled in him. He attended daily Mass for many years, taught his children to forgive, and in the end, asked for people to say the old familiar Latin prayers of his youth over his hospital bed.
“He may have stopped being a priest, but he never left the church,” his daughter said.
Arrangements were by Donnellan Funeral Home, (773) 238-0075.
Mr. O’Keefe is survived by his wife, Diane; his sons, Joseph Reynoso, Christopher Reynoso, Nick O’Keefe, Matt O’Keefe, J. Daniel O’Keefe, J.J. O’Keefe; Timothy O’Keefe, Dominic O’Keefe; his daughters, Julie Hazen, Nancy Coleman, Jody Gusich, Anne France and Cecelia O’Keefe; his sister, Mary DeMolick; 22 grandchildren; and many friends.
Memorial gifts would be appreciated to Servants of Mary (Servites), 3121 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago, IL 60612.
Lauren FitzPatrick may be reached at lfitzpatrick@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5964.
