Jean Sullivan Keller

Heaven has taken the soul of Jean Sullivan Keller, leaving to many a world a little less of itself without her inspiring goodness. It all went with her passing on January 14, 2019, at the age of 95.

Not just nice and kind, Mrs. Keller, who lived in Rolling Hills Estates for 59 years, was naturally friendly, loving, nurturing, graceful and humble despite her well-upbringing. She possessed a loyal streak as long as her life, and loving traits showed in her trustworthiness and everywhere she went. When people talk of having no enemies, Jean actually had none.

That's because she was fun, sociable, dependable, polite, without grudges and unequaled as a listener. Irishness flashed in this proud descendant's humor and amazing reliability to be pleasant. Her laughs were generous and her positive outlook and Christian faith something to behold.

Among all her goodness, Mrs. Keller's most precious virtue was patience, which she applied with tireless dedication and determination to raise nine children with her husband, Ernest, who died in April 2014 after 65 years of marriage.

Jean Claire Sullivan was born February 26, 1923, and raised in Winnetka, Illinois, by Kathryn and Harry Sullivan, who co-owned and operated with his brothers the Gartland Steamship Co., a carrier of coal, grain and automobiles throughout the Great Lakes. To her grave she carried thankfulness for the closeness to her folks and older sister, Sue, and their life on Chicago's North Shore.

It was being there and with them that greatly shaped Jean's soundness, underpinned by Midwestern principles, Christian values and strong education. Jean graduated from Roycemore School in Evanston in 1941 and Northwestern University's School of Education four years later.

Miss Sullivan was five years into her grade-school teaching career when she met Ernest Keller Jr., a hugely motivated Northwestern medical student who spotted her at a party hosted by one of his medical fraternity brothers and her former Alpha Phi sister. Despite her father's word from Keller that he was too busy with medical training to get married, they did just that with a big celebration in downtown Chicago in 1948, weeks before the budding doctor began his residency in New York City.

The first of their nine children came the next year, then another in 1951, before they headed west for Ernest's medical career. They settled in Inglewood, where Ernest began his practice at Prairie Avenue Medical Group, then moved to Rolling Hills Estates in 1959.

By then, Jean had a daughter and four sons, with a fifth on the way, ahead of three more daughters. She named all her children after saints, and instilled the spectrum of observance to Catholicism, from Mass and daily prayer to Catechism and all of the church sacraments.

Weekly Catechism classes were in a routine of many destinations for a mom tooling around in a station wagon full of kids for decades into the early 1980s. Dropoffs, pickups or both when carpooling was not available pulled her from the daily avalanche of diapers and brown bag lunches, the regulating of television choices and house phone line, settling quarrels and stamping out curse words, overseeing homework and knowing who was where before and after dinner.

Because of all that and so much more, Jean had little time for hobbies and leisure. She sewed and redecorated, but mostly for family purposes. When her children were grown, she turned over a lot of free time to Catholic causes that included St. Joseph's Table food charity, prayer groups and managing the distribution of Eucharists to the sick through a team of parishioners at St. John Fisher Church in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Perhaps Jean's final years were among her finest as an example with the onset of Alzheimer's and her acceptance of the inevitable. With Ernest's support and patience and the same from the whole family and caregivers, she maintained her sweetness through more than a decade of decline.

Mrs. Keller is survived by daughter Marti and Paul Galan of Westminster; son Tom and JoAnne "Tuey" of San Marcos; sons Steve and Peter of Sacramento, John of San Diego and Michael of Redondo Beach; daughters Annie Keller of Torrance, Teri and Scott Baker of Ignacio, Colorado, and Lisa and Scott Cowden of Corvallis, Oregon; eight grandchildren; and two great granddaughters.

A Mass will be celebrated at St. John Fisher Parish on January 24 at 11 a.m., followed by burial at Green Hills Mortuary in Rancho Palos Verdes.