   |
  |
|
|
|
"God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. We fail to understand why He did not leave Jackie here for the usual life span of 75 or 80 years. But He chose not to. His will be done!" So said Rev. Nevin Ford, O.F.M., in his homily at the funeral Mass he offered for his niece, Jacqueline (Ford) Lemmon ('87), a wife and home-schooling mother of nine, who, after a 14-month battle with Central Valley Fever, died peacefully at the age of only 39 on March 2, 2005. She was married to Peter Lemmon ('85), who served as the College's Director of Development from 1995 to 1997. Born in Downey, California, Jackie was the youngest of Dr. and Mrs. James Ford's six children. Before attending Thomas Aquinas College, she had been homecoming queen in high school and runner-up for Miss Downey, California. But her beauty wasn't skin-deep. Rather, as she led the busy life of a wife and mother, she was known to her friends for her gentle strength, her determined faith, her thoughtfulness, her sociability. In the fall of 2003, during the last trimester of her eigth pregnancy, Jackie contracted a singularly virulent case of Central Valley Fever; a few months later, now critically ill, she miraculously delivered a healthy baby, Maggie. For the next year, Jackie suffered tremendously, being hospitalized periodically as the disease took its toll. While her health deteriorated and she progressively lost her strength, Jackie nevertheless insisted on caring for her family, declining to give her children's care over to a nanny and reluctant to reduce her role in the community. She continued, as she had for many years, to attend daily Mass with her children. During her last weeks, family and friends-many of them fellow alumni of the College-came together to provide meals for her family and to help care for the children. In late December 2004, Jackie was again hospitalized. Seeming to know that hers was not a battle to be won, Jackie embraced her forced incapacitation, confiding in her husband about how she would like to spend her last days on earth. Thus in her final weeks, Peter arranged for a continuous schedule of friends and family to stay with his wife in her hospital room. While she slipped in and out of consciousness in her hospital bed, they read aloud the familiar Scripture passages she had chosen, recited her best loved prayers, and sang her favorite hymns. Everyone who visited Jackie left filled with joy. "She was so beautiful!" recalls the Lemmon's friend, Rex Mohun ('90). Word went out about this noble young mother. Thousands of people around the country, many of whom had never met Jackie, prayed for her. Just as Thomas Aquinas College students and alumni kept her in their prayers, so, too, did students at Christendom College, where her brother-in-law, Dr. Tim O'Donnell, is president. Even an orphanage in Uganda was on the prayer chain. But as Jackie lay on her hospital bed being treated with morphine for pain, she was not thinking of herself. Instead, she asked to be given intentions for which to offer her sufferings, and at times, even refused morphine. In the end, a basket full of prayer intentions rested next to her. Those who returned from her bedside were renewed by Jackie's unfailing sense of humor and edified by praying with her and for her. Along with hospital staff, they assisted at the daily Mass said in Jackie's room by her parish priest, Rev. Thomas Dome, C.R.I.C. "Visiting Jackie was like being at the foot of the cross," said her close friend, Karen (Stuart) Kelly ('88). "The wonderful thing about Jackie was that she was just one of us," said another dear friend, Christi (Tittmann) Wall ('89). "She was just our Jackie. And when all she could do was blink her eye, it was as though all of her determination was contained in that one, intentional movement." After her death hundreds attended the Rosary Vigil at St. Sebastian Church in Santa Paula, and hundreds more flocked to the funeral Mass for a wife and mother who had simply lived the "Little Way" of St. Therese but whose holy death had affected so many. Accompanied to her final resting place by the mournful strains of the Scottish bagpipes, her body was interred at Bardsdale Cemetery, not far from the Lemmons' home. Dr. O'Donnell's reflection after the funeral Mass resonates still with all who loved Jackie: "The death of the young is like a deluge poured on a fire. And what a fire there was in Jacqueline Louise Lemmon!"
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Spring 2005 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Home | About
| Curriculum
| Campus Life | Chapel
| News| Admission
|
