North Shore Death Notices: March 6 - March 12

The following death notices were added to funeral homes serving the North Shore area in the past week. Those homes have provided obituaries for some of those that have passed away recently. Patch offers condolences to their loved ones, links to their obituaries and notices of upcoming services below.

Donnellan Funeral Home, 10045 Skokie Boulevard in Skokie

Anne Marie McDermott née Quinlan, 87, Wilmette
Service March 12

David Camacho, Jr., 40, Chicago
Visitation March 12, Service March 13

Peter Gus Athas, 60, Chicago
Visitation March 13, Service March 14

Bud Chambers, 82, Winnetka
Service March 14

Charles J. Benvenuto, 64, Winnetka
Service March 16

Anne G. Jordan, 86, Northfield
Service March 18

Maxine Yvonne Taylor Clarke, 96, Evanston
Service April 7

Felix Emanuel Downie, 82, Evanston

Grace Chen-McClone, 67, Wilmette

Haben Funeral Home, 8057 Niles Center Road in Skokie

Charles L. Provo, 94, Skokie

Kenneth J. Smentek, 73, Morton Grove

Ronda Elizabeth Barton, 66, Evanston

Simkins Funeral Home, 6251 Dempster Street in Morton Grove

Dorothy "Dottie" Hope, 89
Visitation March 21, Service March 22

Weinstein & Piser Funeral Home, 111 Skokie Boulevard in Wilmette

Carol L. Meckler née Yablin, 76
Service March 12

Myron Chapman, 90, Chicago
Service March 12

Kelley & Spalding Funeral Home, 1787 Deerfield Road in Highland Park

Domenic "Dimmer" Cortesi, 84, Highland Park
Services March 16

Joan Conboy Allen, 95, Deerfield
Services March 17

Kanjibhai Surani, 96, Long Grove

Katherine Anne Hurwitz née Silber, 57, Evanston

Reuland & Turnbough Funeral Homes, 1407 North Western Avenue in Lake Forest

Catherine Lenore Sommers, 91, Lake Forest,
Service March 17

Joan T. Cook, 89, Lake Forest
Service April 28

Wenben Funeral Home, 320 Vine Avenue in Lake Forest

Joseph W. Rose, 97, Lake Forest

Chicago Jewish Funerals, 8851 Skokie Boulevard in Skokie

Frances Bifeld née Gerber, 94
Service March 12

Leslie Kronenberg, 79
Service March 12

Roslyn S. de León nee Steiner, 77
Service March 12

Charles Weitzenfeld, 95
Service March 12

Marilyn Kohen née Goodman, 90
Service March 12

Sylvia Thall née Baylen, 96

Bella Bender, 90

Melvin Goldberg, 89

Alice Friedman Cohan Cap, 83

Lawrence Asher Frohman, 83

Peter G. O. Freund, 81

Ivan Lefton, 70

Grayson Edward Fell, 1 day

Douglas Lee Beechen

Carroll Stein

Grace Chen-McClone, age 67, of Wilmette, IL. Beloved wife of Kevin Patrick McClone; loving mother of Matthew Chen McClone.

Grace Li-hua Chen-McClone passed away at home on Saturday March 3rd, 2018, with her husband Kevin and son Matthew at her side as she took her last breath. She had been battling with follicular lymphoma since 2012, including rounds of chemotherapy and a thirty day stay in intensive care in 2015. She fought back each time while maintaining her work, teaching and guiding others. Through all her suffering, she held fast to her faith in God. She was alert up to and including the final day she passed. Grace is survived by her older sister, Su-e, and younger brother Min-qiang. Her youngest brother Miao-tze is deceased.

Grace was born and raised on a small farm home in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Grace’s father worked in construction, but needed to supplement unsteady work with a family business selling food in the local market, where Grace began helping at age six. As a student, she was always at the top of her class. When she completed sixth grade, her father told her the family could only afford to continue sending the boys to school. After pleading for months and testing into the top school in her area, she convinced her father to allow her to continue her studies. She attended junior high school for two happy years, but at age 15 she could no longer study as she had to run her family’s market business and take care of her sick father. Only years later, working in factories during the day, was she able to attend night school and complete her high school education.

Grace loved Taiwan and made several visits back with Kevin and Matthew to see family and friends. She passed her deep love for Taiwan on to her family. Grace was fluent in four languages: Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka, and English. Grace taught Chinese language classes to hundreds of men, women, and children from beginner level to fluency. She taught both the history and traditions of Chinese culture as well as spirituality, mindfulness, and empathy skills training.

Grace was drawn to her Catholic faith by encountering many men and women of deep faith in Taiwan: lay men and women, missionaries, religious priests and sisters. It all began when she became a staff counselor at “Life Line”, a Jesuit crisis counseling center in Taiwan where she trained hundreds of volunteers in crisis counseling work. In September of 1980, she quit her work to enter the Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan. Her own words describe the inner transformation that was taking place: “At Fu Jen I experienced deeper meaning in my faith, learned to think critically, and developed a theology about a loving God despite all the suffering in the world. I came to see myself as worthy, lovable and accepted by a personal God who loved me. I often felt a new sense of joy and wanted to share this experience with others.” Grace was one of a few lay women at that time to get an Master of Divinity Equivalency in 1986. Quite a journey from being told as a child she couldn’t go on to higher education as a woman. But Grace was tough and determined to not stop growing, and so God called her forth.

Grace desired further growth in pastoral skills and in her clinical pastoral education training. With this motivation, she made the courageous trip to the United States in 1986 to enter the University of Chicago Hospitals as both a chaplain and Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor-in-Training. It was in Hyde Park/Chicago where Grace met her husband-to-be, Kevin. They married in 1989. Kevin and Grace shared their common passion for the missions, chaplaincy, psychology, pastoral work and cross-cultural studies. In 1990 Grace received her Master’s Degree in Pastoral Counseling at Loyola University. She later became a Certified Pastoral Counselor.

Grace gave birth to her one son, Matthew (“gift of God”) Chen McClone on February 19, 1992. She chose to limit her own work, wanting to devote all her passion and energy to raising Matthew. Grace loved being a mom and took Matthew everywhere around Chicago. Rather than send him to preschool, she took him on the “L” everyday to visit museums and libraries. Once Matthew was in school, she gradually returned to teaching and pastoral ministry and eventually joined her husband Kevin teaching graduate courses in pastoral ministry at Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park. She became Co-Director of the Institute for Sexuality Studies located on the campus of Catholic Theological Union in 2003. Over these past twenty years, Grace taught hundreds of priests, sisters, and lay men and women from all six continents. She especially loved her opportunities to teach in China and Taiwan, and teaching Chinese priests and sisters during summers at DePaul University.

Grace devoted so many hours to serving others - whether teaching, donating to various missionary groups, or entertaining friends and family. She regularly invited missionaries from other countries over to celebrate holidays like Thanksgiving and Easter, as most were far from home. Of course, there was her famous Chinese New Years buffet feast each year, when her home was filled with her Chinese students and their families, as well as parishioners from St. Francis Xavier Church in Wilmette.

Grace would always tell her husband Kevin one of two lines, and often both, as he left home: “God bless you Kevin” and “Remember, treat everyone like Jesus.” All who knew Grace were touched by her vitality, energy, and joy of living. She was a passionate, determined, and persistent woman of faith. Her fire and strength were well known by those whose lives she touched. No wonder she was born with the sign of the Tiger!

Grace was a woman of integrity and deep convictions. She was a deeply devoted wife and mother. One friend shared how Grace had a gift for “igniting a passion” in others in whatever she did: teaching, cooking, hosting, or deeply listening to others. In her last months and days, Grace would follow Pope Francis and his various travels and homilies on an almost daily basis. Two years ago, despite her illness, she made a trip to Rome to receive the Pope’s Christmas blessing, a long-held dream. Grace asked to receive daily communion and stated that was how she wanted to begin each day. She would easily shed tears for others with a heart of empathy and compassion. Despite her own suffering, she was focused on the pain, suffering and plight of so many immigrants and refugees, especially those from Syria and Iraq.

She will be deeply missed, but her love endures forever as a sign of God’s love for us all. The line on her prayer card from St. Irenaeus that she loved to quote to her students sums it up best: “The Glory of God is a human being fully alive".

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to:

Catholic Relief Services for Syrian Refugees
P.O. Box 17090
Baltimore, MD 21297-0303

» via Donnellan Family Funeral Services

Last week: North Shore Death Notices: Feb. 27 - March 5