A mother of 15 and a grandmother of 45, Diane O’Keefe-Dunne served as a mother to all the children in her Beverly community, and she later in life carved out careers teaching religious education and in real estate.
O’Keefe-Dunne’s greatest pride was her children. From a young age, her desire had been to have at least 12 children to bring as much love into the world as she could manage, and her final three children — “the three little ones,” she called them — wound up being, for her, her “extra added blessings.”
“The most amazing thing about Diane is she was always able to see people for what they were,” said Ann Briggs, a longtime friend and neighbor from Beverly who now lives in downtown Chicago. “There were never any pretenses. There’s that quote from the film ‘Avatar’: ‘I see you.’ She had that special ability to see people and know them for who they were.”
O’Keefe-Dunne, 85, died of natural causes April 13 at OSF Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Evergreen Park, said her daughter, Bernadette O’Keefe. She had lived in Beverly since 1973.
Born Diane DePatta in 1940 in San Francisco, O’Keefe-Dunne was the daughter of a father who worked in men’s retail and moved his family around California while he was tasked with opening Bond Clothing Stores. While she was a child, O’Keefe-Dunne’s family moved from San Francisco to North Hollywood for her father’s work. They later returned to the San Francisco Bay Area, settling in Berkeley.
O’Keefe-Dunne graduated from Holy Names High School in Oakland. Interested in Catholic education, O’Keefe-Dunne initially considered pursuing life as a nun, said her sister, Debbie Thompson. O’Keefe-Dunne also was blessed with a lovely singing voice, her sister said, and her uncle had wanted to send her to a vocal coach — the same vocal coach used by singer Johnny Mathis, who then had not yet achieved worldwide stardom.
However, O’Keefe-Dunne was more interested in having children, and she married Amado Reynoso — the brother of future California state Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso — when she was 18. With Reynoso, O’Keefe-Dunne had seven children, and the family lived in three towns in California — McFarland, Cambria and Fullerton — before the couple split up in 1969.
While living in Fullerton, O’Keefe-Dunne met John O’Keefe, a priest who was pastor at a Catholic grade school attended by her children. Over the next year, O’Keefe-Dunne and her children moved to San Francisco to be near her parents, but she and O’Keefe, who had gotten a job with the newly formed Head Start program, moved to Chicago.
Dating but not yet married, the couple lived separately, with O’Keefe-Dunne and her seven children living for several months in the North Side Edgewater neighborhood before moving to Chicago Heights for a year.
In 1971, O’Keefe-Dunne moved with her children from Chicago Heights to Richton Park, and that same year, she married O’Keefe. The couple moved to Beverly in 1973, and they went on to have eight children together.
In 1976, with 10 children and an 11th on the way, O’Keefe-Dunne returned to school, earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology from St. Xavier University. She later earned a master’s degree in religious education from Mundelein College, and eventually began teaching Catholic education, including running the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, or CCD, program at St. Barnabas Parish in Beverly, where she sang in the choir for more than 55 years.
O’Keefe-Dunne also was a Mercy Associate through the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, and she also volunteered at the Mercy Circle senior living community in Mount Greenwood.
“First of all, I remember her kindness, and her openness to everyone and her inclusiveness,” said Sandro Tsomaia, the director of music at St. Barnabas. “She was a remarkable woman, and everyone who knew her absolutely adored her.”
Tsomaia said he and O’Keefe-Dunne bonded over music. He recalled how pleased O’Keefe-Dunne was when he moved his family to Beverly after a decade of commuting to the church from the North Side.
“She was a hero. She was a mother of 15 — where do you meet someone like that?” he said. “She was so humble and devoted to her family, and I was fascinated that she had 15 kids but she had so much room to love me, and she already had 15 kids. That was really unbelievable. I felt like I could have been her 16th.”
O’Keefe-Dunne also taught CCD at St. Donatus Parish in Blue Island, and she taught religious education at several Catholic high schools.
O’Keefe-Dunne later went into the real estate industry as an agent, working most recently for the Molloy & Associates agency in Beverly.
After O’Keefe-Dunne’s second husband died in 2005, she remarried again, tying the knot with another former priest, Pat Dunne, in 2008. He died in 2011.
O’Keefe-Dunne never officially retired, but she pulled back from her real estate work about four or five years ago, her daughter said.
Often sporting her signature hair bun, O’Keefe-Dunne appreciated life’s chaos — including a menagerie of pets in her home — and she appreciated a warm cup of tea, a book and a song. She also had a “marvelous sense of humor,” Briggs said.
“We kind of always called it our ‘Far Side’ humor — to look at people and situations and never try to hurt anybody’s feelings, but she could always appreciate the funny side of life,” Briggs said.
A son, Chris Reynoso, died in 2013 in a motorcycle accident. In addition to her daughter and her sister, O’Keefe-Dunne is survived by seven sons, Joseph Reynoso, Nick O’Keefe, Matt O’Keefe, Dan O’Keefe, JJ O’Keefe, Tim O’Keefe and Dominic O’Keefe; six daughters, Julie Reynoso, Nancy Reynoso-Coleman, Joanna O’Keefe Gusich, Anne France, Siobhan Summers and Cecilia Bylina; and 45 grandchildren.
Services were held.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
