Like a sopping wet Italian beef sandwich or a sunrise over Lake Michigan, Loyola University men’s basketball chaplain Sister Jean is a legend in the city of Chicago. She first gained national notoriety during her squad’s historic Cinderella run to the Final Four as an 11 seed in 2018 but made a big splash off the court as an author when she published her 2023 memoir, “Wake Up with Purpose! What I’ve Learned in My First Hundred Years.”
After reading her memoir, Kelley Klemish, a business unit assistant at Life Care Services, knew she had to get in contact with Sister Jean. Coincidentally, Sister Jean lives in an LCS community, and the two were able to connect as pen pals. Soon after, Klemish took a flight to Chicago to meet her new friend. She discovered that in addition to sharing letters, they shared an Uber driver.
“My Uber driver asked me what I was doing in town,” Klemish said. “I said, ‘I’m going to meet Sister Jean, and he’s like, ‘I know her!’ He remembered giving her a ride when she was 95. He goes through his phone, and he finds a selfie of him and Sister Jean. For the next 45 minutes, we just talked about her and the impact that she had on him. That’s just what Sister Jean does. She keeps making an impact, even if it was for a 10-minute Uber ride or 90-minute conversation or somebody reading her book. The woman just doesn’t stop.”
Once Klemish and Sister Jean finally met face-to-face, Klemish was amazed to see that the Sister Jean depicted in the pages of her book was identical to the one across the table from her.
“She’s 104, but she’s still putting one step in front of the other; she might have some hard days, but you won’t know,” Klemish said. “From the time that I met her, it just really put everything into perspective. It was exactly how she was in her book. She’s very witty, and she remembers everything.”
Despite being 104, Sister Jean is still a fixture on Loyola’s campus as well as in her life plan community, The Clare. Noticing that some of her neighbors did not receive many visitors, she started a program called SMILE back in 2009 (SMILE stands for Students Moving Into the Lives of the Elderly). It was inspired by a similar program implemented at Loyola University in New Orleans. Sister Jean’s activity level is a source of her vitality, both physical and mental, Klemish said.
“She has a very structured routine that she follows, and she does that to keep her mind sound and to stay healthy and to be active,” Klemish said. “She says that she’s not going to be in that wheelchair forever; she’s still going to therapy and still pushing herself to be stronger. So it’s not just her mind; it’s her spirit and I find that super inspiring.”
“By me sharing my story to my LCS family, I’ll still meet people passing through our office and they’re like, ‘Hey, I got the book, and this is what has changed for me,’” Klemish said. “She’s so humble. She has no idea the impact that she’s had and that she makes every day on people.”
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