The legacy of a Catholic Mary Washington College alumna (now University of Mary Washington) in Fredericksburg continues to inspire students 50 years after her graduation.
Jean Marie Donovan, class of 1975, was a political science and economics double major who was brutally raped and murdered Dec. 2, 1980, by soldiers while working as a lay Maryknoll missionary in El Salvador. The same politically motivated violence that took her life and the lives of her three companions, Sisters Ita Ford, Maura Clarke and Dorothy Kazel, also claimed the life of St. Archbishop Oscar Romano eight months earlier.
What motivated a blond-haired, blue-eyed Connecticut native to step away from a lucrative career and a marriage proposal to care for the children and poor in a war-torn country?
We may never know the full answer behind it, but clues can be found by looking at Donovan’s time at Mary Washington.
Several sources credit a study abroad trip in Ireland during her junior year and friendship with former missionary Father Michael Crowley, as the source of her inspiration for mission work. Although she did not act on it right away it’s evident the seeds were sown.
After graduation she continued on the path of worldly success. She completed a master’s program and was hired as a management consultant for the Arthur Andersen accounting firm in Cleveland. She left the job and joined a missionary training program with Maryknoll in Cleveland and in July 1979 boarded a plane to El Salvador. When asked about her decision, she said she was following “a gut feeling” and said, “I want to get closer to him, and that’s the only way I think I can.”
Her fun-loving, caring nature would soon earn the devotion of the people she cared for in La Libertad who called her “St. Jean the playful.”
After her death, her alma mater took steps to honor the 27-year-old missionary. Articles with news of her death were recorded in the Mary Washington alumni magazines. In 1981, the Arlington diocese purchased a house at 1225 Brent St. for the university’s Newman Club, which they named the Jean Donovan House.
The ministry sponsored a “Jean Donovan Week” in 1982 to commemorate the second anniversary of her death. There was also a Jean Donovan Award bestowed on the graduating senior who best exhibited Donovan’s faith, charity and conviction.
One of Donovan’s most devoted supporters was her political science professor Lewis P. Fickett who led many discussions about Donovan over the years. In an article written for the Free Lance-Star, Fickett, who passed away in 2016, is quoted as saying, “She had within her the seed of social consciousness that prompted her to turn away from her great material success to a life of helping hungry children far away.”
Mary Washington alumna Sarah Richardson remembers first hearing Donovan’s story when she arrived at Mary Washington as a freshman in 1998.
“It captured my imagination because I didn’t know vocationally what I was being called to and here was someone who was doing big things before knowing herself,” said Richardson. “She took the leap without the infrastructure of a religious order or a spouse. It got my attention. She also had the reputation of being a ‘live wire’ and I like that she was not cookie-cutter devout or two dimensional, the way saints can feel sometimes.”
After graduation, Richardson continued to keep Donovan close to her heart. She even had the opportunity to visit Donovan’s grave in Sarasota Memorial Park in Florida, an experience she described as “very moving.”
For students like Richardson who walked the same halls, sat in the same seats and even learned from some of the same professors, it makes Donovan more relatable and her story more inspiring. But every story can wane with the passage of time. Thankfully, Donovan has never been forgotten. This year especially, there seems to be a revival of interest in her story.
“I was just delighted to learn about her life when I came here,” said Father Richard Miserendino, chaplain of the St. John Bosco Center. “I was like, holy cow we have somebody who was a missionary and a martyr.”
While Father Miserendino was looking into new ways to share her story with students, he received a call from the UMW alumni center.
“They reached out to us with the opportunity to collaborate on a presentation for the 50th anniversary of her graduation,” he said. “This opportunity has provided us a connection between us and the alumni office. And it’s nice because it has also given me an opportunity to connect with the students on campus.”
The presentation will be held at the St. John Bosco Center May 30 at 2 p.m. with a reception to follow.
Father Miserendino also plans to share Donovan’s story through a mission trip to El Salvador next June. Students will have the opportunity to literally walk in her missionary footsteps. While there, he hopes to see if there is an interest in opening up Donovan’s cause for canonization. Those causes can only be opened in either a candidate’s home diocese or place of death. In the meantime, however, there are ways that the St. John Bosco Center can promote her cause.
“You have to start with the fame of the person,” said Father Miserendino. “We get in touch with the spiritual roots of her mission work and inform the students that she exists. I really do think she is there interceding for us. There is a spiritual fruit that God wants us to have from this.”
Kassock is a freelance writer in Fredericksburg.
