Jean M. Burke

Jean Marie Boitano Burke passed away on January 15, 2021 in Redlands, California at the age of 91. She had tested positive for Covid-19 one month earlier. Jean was born in San Jose, California, on May 26, 1929 to Angelo and Anna Boitano. She grew up in San Jose and graduated from Notre Dame High School. She was also a graduate of the College of Notre Dame in Belmont, California.

After college, she attended the O’Connor Hospital School of Nursing in San Jose and graduated as a registered nurse. She worked for some time at that hospital, and then she and two fellow nurses, Bettie and Marie, who shared her sense of adventure and yearning to see the world, decided to spend a year working at the hospital in the Panama Canal Zone.

She returned to San Jose and worked for an ophthalmology group for several years before deciding with her friend Bettie to embark on a bigger adventure and join the U.S. Air Force. After training and serving together in Alabama and Florida, Jean was assigned to a U.S. military rest and recreation station in the Philippines and then was stationed at George Air Force Base in Victorville, California, where her chief nurse introduced her to an American Red Cross representative stationed in San Diego, Eugene Burke. They hit it off and started dating. They often met on the weekends at Gene’s parents’ house in Highland, between their two duty stations.

Their romance continued after they were both assigned to Europe, Gene to Germany and Jean to Turkey. They were permanently reunited when they were married in the U.S. Army chapel in Wurzburg, Germany in 1968. After their daughters Kathryn and Patricia were born, Jean devoted herself to raising the girls and making a home as Gene spent a career in the Service to the Armed Forces division of the American Red Cross, which included two tours in conflict zones and eight family moves to locations in Maryland, California, Missouri, and Japan. After Gene retired, they moved to San Bernardino, California where Gene passed away a few years later.

After she was widowed, one of Jean’s great joys was becoming a grandmother, and she delighted in spending time around her grandchildren. She also engaged in her love of travel, with cruises around Europe, Alaska, and South America with cousins and to the Northeast with her niece, Carol. In the last three years of her life, she lived in a retirement community in Redlands where she was known for being an enthusiastic participant in all the planned activities.

Jean was a talented cook, a fearless traveler, a proud veteran, and a caring nurse. She was full of life and love. To her children, she was a wonderful mother, and to her grandchildren, a loving Nonna. She had an infectious laugh and the beautiful habit of giving you her full attention when you spoke. Family meant everything to her and some of her fondest memories were of gatherings at her family’s cabin in the mountains.

Jean is survived by her daughters and their husbands, Kathryn Burke & Greg Adams and Patricia & Sam Wilson, her four grandchildren, Adam, Nicholas, Rachel, and Stephen, her brother and his wife, Bob & Nancy Boitano, her nieces and nephew and their families, and many beloved cousins.

She was laid to rest at Santa Clara Mission Cemetery, in Santa Clara, California. A Memorial Mass will be held at a later date, when it is safe to gather.

As an Italian mother and grandmother, cooking for and feeding others was one of the ways Jean expressed her love. Accordingly, in lieu of flowers, donations can be made in her memory to any local food bank or organization that fights hunger.