Senior Story Corner
Sharing the Life of Shirley R Meagher
Fountain of good will, and unflinching in her faith, Shirley Ruth Patee Meagher ended a remarkable life on August 11, 2023, at the age of 100.
Born in a farmhouse near Peoria, Illinois, on March 15, 1923, the doctor arrived by horse and buggy. She absorbed Depression Era values, and determination was one of them. When Shirley Temple was every little girl’s idol, she learned of a newspaper ad offering a Shirley Temple doll for four annual subscriptions. She went door to door for weeks and treasured that doll her entire life.
As high school was ending, World War II was beginning. Brothers, sons, cousins and even her young husband Eddie went across the sea to fight. She gladly contributed to the united effort by working at Caterpillar, and gladly contributed to the Baby Boom when it was over.
While raising her family in Washington, Illinois she became the Irma Bombeck of Tazewell County, writing a weekly column “IT COULD HAPPEN” from 1963-1973. In 1967, she was the 3rd person to enroll at the newly-opening Illinois Central College. Two more years at Eureka College, and to her own amazement she graduated summa cum laude.
In the 1970s she taught at St. Patrick’s Grade School in Washington, IL, inheriting a cabin on lovely Pine Lake in Wisconsin, and sponsoring many Chinese-Vietnamese families who had escaped Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. She had become very fond and familiar with the Chinese language and culture, setting her sights on becoming a lay missionary in China after retirement. She was accepted by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, and began her service at an orphanage in Macau, China in 1987.
After her parents passed (both living to age 100), she spent 17 years in Tucson where she made a practice of riding a pink bicycle and singing in the St. Cyril’s choir. She was a writer of impressive ability, and a bridge player to be reckoned with. It was also during these years that she established her most lasting legacy: a daily walk to pick up stray coins, which she dutifully saved for charitable donation.
In 2011, she joined her sister Lauralee Randolph and 2 first cousins at the Buehler Home in Peoria, which she called her palace. There she continued a robust life, anchored by her daily walk to Mass at St. Philomena Catholic Church, followed by her “coin walk” for St. Jude’s Hospital. Many were the times when friends and family tried to persuade her to live a more cautious life, but she had a determination that was impossible to defeat. She laughed at almost anything, but never as merrily as she laughed at herself.