DIOCESAN NEWS
04/13/07
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Volunteer `needed to be Catholic’
By Fabvienen Taylor
        JACKSON — Little Janie Keary always got excited when her father’s mother came to visit from Phoenix.
        “My grandmother was a feisty, full-bloodied Cajun and I knew when she came she was going to bring her Catholic stuff with her,” said Keary, 71, retired and a regular volunteer at Catholic Charities.
        Among her grandmother’s “stuff” was her rosary, said Keary, who as a little girl attended the Baptist church with her mother.
        “Also pinned inside her suitcase was her St. Christopher medal. I was just a little girl then but I grew up knowing I needed to be Catholic. I didn’t even have to think about it. So I promised the good Lord, ‘When I get on my own, I’m going to the Catholic church.’”
Keary’s father was Catholic, but inactive. She had a Catholic playmate and they studied the “Baltimore Catechism” together.
        Later while attending Central High School, Keary had a good friend who was Catholic.         “Sometimes while walking past St. Peter’s church to the bus stop my friend would ask, ‘Do you want to go with me in here and make a visit?’”
        Keary jumped at the chance. “Honey I was so happy. I would kneel in the back of the church. I know right now the exact spot I was in. I’d put a piece of notebook paper on my head (as a veil) and be so engrossed, it was so gorgeous.”
        Her mantra became: “This is going to be my church one day, this is going to be my church one day.”
        Today it is Keary’s church. She became Catholic in 1965.
        “But there was a little family problem when I converted,” said Keary. “My father was okay with it. But my mother told me people just did not leave the Baptist church to become Catholic.
        “I told her people weren’t educated about the Catholic Church, that they were just ignorant, that Catholics just didn’t sit around popping beads,” said Keary, referring to praying the rosary.
        After retiring from Allstate in 1997, Keary wasted no time in heading down to Catholic Charities to volunteer. After 10 years as a volunteer, she takes every opportunity to tell people about the programs there, about how the agency helps others.
        “I think more people should volunteer, go out and help others. If you retire and do nothing you are going to get as stale as bread, you just get old,” she said. “Every morning I get up and paint this face and get dressed. If I don’t, I get to feeling punk, bad, depressed. So         I tell people, get up and fix your face, whether it looks good or not.”
        In the mornings when Keary arrives at Catholic Charities’ building on the corner of         Congress and West streets, she can see St. Peter’s right across Smith Park.
        “Every time I look over there and see it I say, ‘There’s my church.’ And every time I walk up those steps to go in, I say, ‘This is my church, this is my church.”
        And just as Keary knew from an early age she wanted to be Catholic, knew she wanted to be at St. Peter’s, she knows she wants to be buried from St. Peter’s too.
        “Actually I want to be cremated. I told Father Brian (Kaskie, the pastor), ‘Look, I came into this world weighing six pounds, I am not going out weighing 150,’” she said.

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