Jacqueline Benoit

Obituary Notice
Jacqueline Benoit

Wife, Mother, Teacher, Artist, Friend. . . Jacqueline Dolores Kollars Benoit, Born April 14, 1924, died Saturday, July 17, 2010 at the St. Elizabeth Health Care Center in Wabasha.

Jacqueline, the seventh of nine siblings, grew up on the plains of Nebraska, doing farm chores, playing in the orchard and walking to school in Crofton. She met Douglas Benoit, the love of her life, at the Shermont Ballroom in Omaha in 1945. Three months later they were married. After his release from the Air Force, they settled in Omaha. Soon they were off--a series of moves took them throughout the middle of the US from the Mexican border to the Canadian one, eventually landing in Minnesota.
Jackie was a home-maker in all of the best senses of the word. She cooked, canned, baked and was always ready to pack up whatever she was preparing to head out on an impromptu picnic. She transformed each house the family lived in into a lovely home, yet always had time to sit with one of her four daughters for a quiet talk. She re-covered furniture, painted "wallpaper" onto walls, sewed bedspreads, and tended many gardens.
In middle age she followed Douglas into teaching three, four and five-year-old children at the Rochester Montessori School and the Montessori Child Development Center in Rochester. Later in life she began to paint: watercolors of the Nebraska prairie, its barns and fences. She was able always to appreciate the "small, ordinary" things--the smell of earth or a fresh tomato, the taste of fresh, cold watermelon, or sitting by the petunias with a cup of coffee at sunset.
Entwined in her very being from childhood, through a high school convent experience, and within her long, sweet marriage has been her Catholic faith. A statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus accompanied the family to each house where Jackie and Doug lived. The rosary was a daily ritual.
She is survived by her dear, devoted Douglas of Lake City, MN; four daughters, Carrie Salemi of Durham, NC, Tyrene Johnston of Sharon, MA, Joan Lizaola of Dundas, MN and Jackie Foley of Rochester; one brother, Orville Kollars; 10 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her parents, four brothers and 3 sisters.
Funeral Mass will be at 10:30 AM on Wednesday at St. Mary of the Lake Catholic Church with Father Richard Dernek presiding. Burial will be at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery. Visitation will be Tuesday from 5 to 7 at the Mahn Family Funeral Home, Anderson-Peterson Chapel in Lake City. In lieu of flowers contributions may be made to Missionaries of Africa, St Mary's Parish and The Fraternity of St. Peter.

www.mahnfamilyfuneralhome.com