Closing column
Alumna’s saintly spirit suffuses Campus Walk
Gregory Stanton, UMW’s James Farmer Visiting Professor of Human Rights, delivered these remarks at a December ceremony on Campus Walk. The occasion marked the 25th anniversary of Jean Donovan’s death and honored her memory with a brass plaque that was installed near the James Farmer memorial.
Today, we dedicate a memorial to Jean Donovan ’75, a saint who walked thousands of times through this plaza. When she was a student at Mary Washington, we might not have recognized her sainthood. She drove a Harley and poured Scotch on her breakfast cereal. She wore a T-shirt and a leather jacket. She laughed a lot.
At the same time, she was a devout Catholic. Her brother Michael’s victory over Hodgkins disease had awakened her to the awesome powers of the Holy Spirit – powers that had helped him overcome even cancer. Jean spent her junior year in Cork, Ireland, where she met a priest named Michael Crowley, who had just returned from 10-year stint as a missionary in Peru. Working with a Catholic student group, she began to feed the hungry and visit the sick. For the first time, she encountered the poor.
Upon her graduation from Mary Washington, Jean went on to earn an MBA and joined Arthur Andersen international accounting firm in Cleveland. At the company Christmas party in 1977, Jean won an all-expense paid trip to Spain for herself and her fiancé. The next day, she asked for time off, cashed in the tickets, and flew directly to Ireland. Father Crowley opened his door and there stood Jean, unannounced. “Don’t laugh too loud,” she said. “I’ve come to talk to you because I think I have to change my life.”
When Jean returned to Cleveland, she drove her Harley to church and told the youth minister she wanted to volunteer to work with inner-city kids. At the end of 1977, she quit her job at Arthur Andersen and headed to the Maryknoll Lay Missioners, where she was trained to spend three years in El Salvador.
At that time, El Salvador was racked by civil war. Right-wing death squads were even assassinating Catholic priests and catechists. Jean’s friends and family feared for her safety and tried to talk her out of going.
But Jean wrote, “I have been thinking about this vocation for many years. I think that for a number of years, Christ has been sending people into my life and through their example and actions, I have heard a calling to missionary work.”
In La Libertad, El Salvador, she delivered food to the hungry and provided family education. She had her Harley shipped to La Libertad. The Salvadorans called her Saint Jean the Playful. She became a follower of Archbishop Oscar Romero. When he came to La Libertad, Jean baked him her famous chocolate chip cookies.
In 1980, the violence in El Salvador increased, and Archbishop Romero opened the mammoth seminary in downtown San Salvador to displaced Salvadorans. On March 24, 1980, while Archbishop Romero was celebrating Mass, a death squad assassin shot and killed him as he held the cup of Holy Communion. Jean was among the 100,000 people who attended his funeral. Government troops opened fire on the funeral-goers and 44 people died in the stampede. On July 6, 1980, Jean was escorted home from a movie by two friends. Just outside Jean’s door, the friends were shot and killed.
In September of that year, Jean took a six-week vacation. She traveled to London to see her fiancé, to Ireland to see Father Crowley, and to the U.S. Her friends and family begged her not to return to El Salvador. Jean prayed deeply about it, concluding,
“I belong there. Those people need me. … The danger is extreme. I am not up for suicide. Several times I have decided to leave El Salvador. I almost could, except for the children, the poor, bruised victims of this insanity. Who will care for them? Whose heart could be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and loneliness? Not mine … not mine.”
In a remark typical of Jean, she also told one of her best friends before she returned to El Salvador: “Look, it’s a can’t-lose situation for me! Either I will get three years of great experiences out of it, or I will die. And then you’ll have to pray to Saint Jean the Playful for the rest of your life.”
On the evening of Dec. 2, 1980, Jean and Sister Dorothy Kazel picked up Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford at the San Salvador airport and headed into town. At a roadblock, they were kidnapped by five Salvadoran National Guardsmen who raped them, shot them, and buried their bodies in a shallow grave.
The story didn’t end there, though. The international outcry over their murders led to FBI-assisted investigations and the first convictions of death squad killers by a Salvadoran court. A civil trial in the U.S. brought by Jean’s family 19 years later finally demonstrated our government’s complicity in the violations of human rights by the Salvadoran junta.
Jean Donovan was a hell-raiser. But the guardsmen who murdered her and buried her body 25 years ago could not bury her spirit. She is risen and is with us today. I can feel her presence, like her laughter on the wind. She has a twinkle in her blue Irish eyes, and a smile that could melt a machine gun. With her Lord Jesus, she invites us, “Whoever would save her life will lose it, and whoever loses her life for my sake will save it. … Sell all you have and give to the poor. You will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me.”
