A funeral Mass for Sister Jean Schmid, SSND, was celebrated on June 9 in the Theresa Center chapel at Sancta Maria in Ripa. Sister Jean died June 2 at Anna House at The Sarah Community in Bridgeton. She was 91.
The first of two children of Nell (Tebeau) and Joseph Schmid was born in St. Louis on May 21, 1935. She was baptized on May 28, 1935, at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church and named Jean Marie. Her brother, Donald, was born in November 1936. Throughout their childhood, the pair was very close, and Jean joined Donald in many athletic activities. Their father died in September 1940 and her maternal grandmother came to live and care for the children while their mother worked.
Jean attended kindergarten at Nativity Parish, grades one through five at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, staffed by the Sisters of Loretto, and grades six through eight at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, which was staffed by the School Sisters of Notre Dame. She attended Notre Dame High School as an aspirant. During her senior year, her mother married Ray Butler and the family grew to include four stepbrothers and four stepsisters. Later, her mother gave birth to a little girl.
Jean began thinking of becoming a religious sister in grade school. She entered the candidature at Sancta Maria in Ripa on Aug. 28, 1952. She was received into the novitiate on Aug. 1, 1953, and given the name M. Helen Rose. She professed first vows on Aug. 2, 1954, and final vows on Aug. 2, 1960. She later returned to her baptismal name.
After profession, she taught at St. Bernadette at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis and St. Anthony Grade and High School in Effingham, Illinois. She was always interested in the foreign missions, a desire fostered by her mother and grandmother, and in 1965, she was missioned to Japan. She first spent two years as a student in the House of Studies in Tokyo, learning the Japanese language. During the next seven years, she taught at Notre Dame Girls’ Secondary School in Kyoto. After a year of study at Saint Louis University, she returned to Japan and taught at Notre Dame Women’s College (now University) in Kyoto.
Sister Jean was a creative and imaginative person, had an excellent sense of humor, was warm and caring and always complimenting others. During her years in Japan, she had the opportunity to travel and engage in volunteer work. She spent one summer serving in a children’s hospital in South Korea and visited a number of cities in Asia and Europe.
In 1978, she established a sponsorship program in Japan for the education of poor village children and women in India. This program has successfully educated thousands of youth in a variety of projects and continues today. Through her passion for the poor and acting on this conviction, she touched the lives of hundreds of people. She was truly a bridge builder across cultures.
In 1990, she returned to the United States and studied at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. She completed a master’s degree in theology in 1992. She then returned once more to Japan to teach at Notre Dame Women’s College. In 1998, she became a secretary in the SSND Regional Office in Kyoto. After two years in that role, she said her farewells to Japan and made her way back to the United States, having spent a combined 32 years in Japan.
Back in Missouri, Sister Jean transitioned to parish ministry and for the next several years was an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher to Mexican immigrants and Hispanic people in Verona, as well as the parish coordinator for both Sacred Heart Parish in Verona and Holy Trinity Parish in Aurora.
In 2004, she moved to Sancta Maria in Ripa and embraced a new ministry as mission coordinator, in which she provided mission education, served as a secretary for various organizations and taught English to the Vietnamese sisters who lived in residence at Theresa Center.
In 2022, she was missioned to Veronica House at The Sarah Community in Bridgeton. As her health declined, she was transferred to Anna House at The Sarah Community in 2025. In May 2026, she was placed on hospice.
Sister Jean was preceded in death by her parents, Nell and Joseph Schmid. She is survived by her brother, Donald, of St. Louis and her sister, Theresa Folsom, of Columbia, Missouri, extended family members, School Sisters of Notre Dame in community, SSND associates and many friends in both Japan and the United States.
Burial was in the Sancta Maria in Ripa cemetery.
