Jerilynn Marie Creedon

Jerilynn Marie (Johnson) Creedon, affectionately “Jerri” to so many. Born October 16, 1942, in Staten Island, New York, the eldest daughter of Bertrand Johnson and Mary Patchin Johnson. Died December 13, 2025 in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Jerri decided early to dedicate her life’s work to caring for the sick as a registered nurse, a vocation well suited to her selfless kindness and compassion and at which she excelled for decades. She attended, and earned her nursing pin from, St. Clare's Hospital School of Nursing in New York City, then a prestigious and well-regarded hospital-based diploma program in nursing. She wore her nursing pin proudly for the duration of her fifty plus years as a registered nurse. During her early career working as a nurse in Staten Island, she met her husband, Dan, an accountant then working in New York City for the prominent accounting firm, Haskins & Sells. They married in 1967 and moved to Dan’s hometown, Brockton, Massachusetts shortly thereafter. It was in Brockton where Jerri and Dan started their family and life together. In 1968 they purchased their first home on the west side of Brockton and months thereafter welcomed their first child, “young Dan”. Six years thereafter they welcomed their second child, Sean. Also at that time, Dan’s daughters, Maureen and Michele, came to live with them. Jerri selflessly welcomed Maureen and Michele as her own daughters and was thrilled suddenly to be the mother of four: two young sons and two teenage daughters. Jerri’s true passion and joy in life was being the caring and loving mother that she was to her sons and daughters. She worked as a registered nurse in Brockton at the Cardinal Cushing Hospital and then at the Brockton Detox. After the family left Brockton and moved to Sandwich, Jerri continued her commitment to helping and caring for people as they struggled to recover from substance abuse and addiction at the Pocasset Detox and thereafter for more than thirty years at Gosnold Treatment Center in Falmouth.

To those who knew her, Jerri easily will be remembered always as the thoughtful, considerate, kind, authentic, selfless, loving and caring sister, mother, aunt, grandmother, great grandmother, friend, caregiver, colleague and, even during her last years at the Royal of Cotuit, patient, that she was. There was, however, another defining aspect of Jerri’s nature for which she was not as readily known that became more apparent as she battled the increasingly debilitating effects of chronic rheumatoid arthritis (RA). She was, to an extent, an amalgamation of the defining characters of her father, Bert, and her mother, Mary. In addition to her magnetic warmth and kindness, Jerri also was a brave, resilient, unrelenting and gritty fighter. She possessed a quiet, unassuming, steadfast and stoic tenacity about which few were aware. Even as the advanced stages of her condition were beginning to take a more significant toll on her ability to function, she persisted and continued to work at the job that she loved well into her seventies. She approached every challenge in her life that way; with a certain stalwart resilience and quiet determination. In her later years, as she battled the vagaries of advanced RA, she confronted each new health challenge with that same resolute tenacity. She never complained or resented her circumstances. She remained meaningfully engaged with her community of caregivers and fellow residents at the Royal, where most days she could be found in the community room playing bingo, watching a movie or chatting with friends. When visited one day in the hospital only a few weeks before her death, Maureen asked incredulously how she could remain so happy and positive in the face of so many health problems, injuries and illnesses. Jerri replied without hesitation: “How else is there to be?” Right up until her last days, through nothing more than sheer willpower and a Sisyphean unwillingness to surrender notwithstanding the overwhelming improbability of success, Jerri embraced the struggle, found meaning, retained her dignity and preserved the quality of her life. In the end, Jerri did prevail, not in the performative traditional sense, but in the sense that she persisted in the face of overwhelming odds against her and never gave up a fight that she always knew that she had no real chance of ever winning. “Cool Hand Jerri.” We all love and will miss you dearly.

She is survived by her sister, Kathy Hopping; her children, Dan (and Janette) Creedon of Marstons Mills, Sean (and Jill) Creedon of Moraga, CA, and Maureen “Spike” Creedon of Cotuit; her grandchildren, Sean, Taylor, Daniel, Liam, Aidan, Cullen, Abby, Anna, Laurel and Audrey; and her great grandchildren, Theodore, Emma and Ryan. Jerri also left many cousins, and nieces and nephews, to whom she was lovingly their “Aunt Jerri”. She is predeceased by her sister, Linda Baker, her daughter, Michele Reagan, and her granddaughter, Casey Reagan.

To all she leaves the enduring legacy of her legendary Chinese chicken wings recipe that she first discovered in the 1976 edition of the Hancock Elementary School PTA Cookbook entitled “Ma You’re A Good Cook But - - -“ that she kept to her final day (plastic baggies on the hands optional; ask Sean):

“Cut wings into 3 pieces throwing away tips. Place in pan similar to bottom of broiler pan. Mix together ¾ stick of oleo, melted, 2 ½ T. maple syrup, 5 T. soy sauce, and garlic salt and pour over wings. Bake in 375 oven for [one hour]. Watch last 15 min. and cover if necessary. –Mary Crocker”

(Her Potatoes Myles Standish aka “Myles Standish Potatoes”, the recipe for which was found where she kept it all of these years, covered in scotch tape, folded in half and stored inside the cover of her Hancock School Cookbook, also deserve high praise and a close, honorable mention, second.)