Jeannie Mayes passed away on Memorial Day, May 27, 2013. She leaves behind her husband Richie DiCapua, her children Heather and Mickey Greenberg, her six grandchildren, a great-grandson, and many dear friends and relatives. Jeannie Mayes was known in Santa Fe Monthly Meeting of Friends as Jean Mayes. In 2012, she decided to return to her childhood and family name because she found Jeannie more playful and affectionate. Jeannie is a fitting name since living life as an adventure and with loving exuberance only increased over her lifetime. Born in Detroit, Michigan on April 11, 1941, Jeannie lived for many years in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. In 1990, she came to Santa Fe as a sojourner from the Urbana-Champaign Meeting. Heather and Mickey grew up in this meeting, and she was a member there from 1966 until her death. Their Memorial Minute recalls her creativity. There were sewing parties where she often left in a brand new outfit, such as the dancing costume she made from a pink-and-red India print bedspread. Another memory was an apple crisp from a bumper crop of Golden Delicious apples from Jeannieʼs backyard. A half-gallon of applesauce came unsealed and had begun to ferment, so she brought Hard Cider Apple Crisp to potluck. Jeannieʼs activism also was creative. Friends remember her setting up a sprout farm on the site of a nuclear reactor. She did guerrilla theatre with United Mine Workers in a McDonalds, where they mopped floors, sang protest lyrics, and disappeared. She once chained herself to a nuclear reactor and another time protested in Springfield by spilling pigʼs blood on the front stairs of a government building. Jeannie served as the Resident Friend of the meetinghouse on Canyon Road, and continued her active engagement in Santa Fe Monthly Meeting until 2003, when she and Richie bought some land, and began an organic farm. They bought a trailer, named it Moby Dick, and began traveling around the country to sell arts and crafts at fairs and festivals under the name of Celtic Dragon. She and Richie moved to Costa Rica in 2009, where their interest in organic farming and the healing arts continued. They returned every year to the States to visit family and to see friends in Santa Fe. Jeannie was very accomplished. She earned a Masters in Psychology from Eastern Illinois University and set up a private practice in Seattle in the early eighties until the rainy climate drew her south to Santa Fe. She was a single mom. She was an artist, freely expressing herself in paintings and drawings. She made pottery and engaged in countless craft projects. She loved free-spirited dancing and singing. She was an avid contra dancer, traveling with a group to perform international folk dances in the United Kingdom. She loved country western, swing dancing, song circles and flute playing.
Her activism continued in Santa Fe. She led non-violent training sessions and did draft counseling during the first Gulf War. She founded Nuclear Free Nation. Hundreds of petitions were strung on black string to become a long winding queue around and through the aisles of a room where a hearing was held on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant that eventually opened near Carlsbad to bury the hazardous waste from Los Alamos. She also began Friendly Connections during this time, which gave us, near and far, a wide connect before the Internet. Her son Mickey recalls that Jeannieʼs activism was deeply rooted in community and in her nature as a spiritual person. She gave to the Quaker communities in the various places where she lived, and shared teachings from the Course in Miracles and the Essene Gospel of Peace. Friends also remember Jeannieʼs love of nature. Her gardening skills were evident in the Olive Rush garden of the Canyon Road Meeting in Santa Fe. She connected with the spirits of the plant world, creating gardens, planting trees, collecting seeds, starting plants and giving them away. She loved wild places. Throughout the Americas she loved and communed with nature, whether hiking up mountains, or along rivers and seacoasts. The Urbana-Champaign Minute recounts that Jeannie was first diagnosed with breast cancer in Seattle in 1987. Having tried the surgery and radiation methods available in the medical-industrial complex, she dealt successfully with several relapses using various alternative health methods, including all-raw foods, raising and juicing wheat grass, which became a business venture in Santa Fe. Her friend Gar Hildenbrand, an epidemiologist, informed Friends and friends of Jeannieʼs death by email from Tijuana, where she had gone for treatment in May of 2013. Her heart simply failed, and she died peacefully in her sleep late Memorial Day afternoon. Gar Hildenbrand included a single line Jeannie had managed to type shortly before she died. "I love and appreciate all that you are. When God joins with me I may lose you." We will remember Jeannie for the love, joy, creativity, integrity and generosity she shared with everyone in her life. We will not forget her bright smile, contagious enthusiasm, playfulness and celebration of the gift of life. Jeannie was a “people person” and loved gatherings such as Quaker meetings, Course in Miracles, womenʼs circles, song circles, and dances. With her natural free spirit full of joy Jeannie related to children at their level. Children were naturally drawn to her and considered her a friend and peer. She diligently stayed in touch with many of her friends and relatives, sending hand drawn cards, letters, phone calls and emails. Jeannie had a way of making people feel special and important, acknowledged and remembered. We remember her like that in turn!