Sister Peggy Codd, SNJM

Sister Jeanne Rose

October 10, 1924–February 13, 2010 (Portland, OR)

When Sister Peggy Codd was a senior in high school, she wrote that "the one thing I hate to do is say goodbye to friends." So, in the end, her friends said goodbye to her. About 250 people who had studied, prayed and played golf with her gathered last month to celebrate a woman of compassion who had a competitive edge.

Born Margaret Bonner Codd, Sister M. Jeanne Rose was featured in Sports Illustrated in 1972 as a "Face in the Crowd." Known as "Portland's golfing nun," the look on her face is determined, focused, perhaps, on a golf ball. But it was not the look that many who loved her remember.

"My first day, she called me into her office," says Fedele Bauccio, founder and chief executive officer of Bon Appétit Management Company, which employs 14,000 people and serves 400 colleges and corporations. He met Sister Jeanne Rose in 1964, when he was newly graduated from the University of Portland and had landed a job as food service manager at what was then Marylhurst College. Sister Jeanne Rose was the dean of the women's college.

"I'm sure she thought, 'This guy is single and I've got 300 women in my care,'" Bauccio remembers. "She said to me, 'If you so much as look cross-eyed at any of these girls, I'll kick you off campus. I have eyes in the back of this habit.'

"She gave me that look, and I fell in love with her."

Bauccio says she watched him "like a hawk" but would often meet him in the afternoon to play golf. "Marylhurst had three holes on campus in those days. When I got her out on that golf course, she'd laugh and smile and beat me every time."

Born in 1924, to a Spokane physician and his wife, Peggy Codd was the oldest of four children. Her youngest brother, Robert, remembers her as a tomboy. She played softball and badminton, baseball and football. When the family spent summers at their home in Hayden Lake, Idaho, she'd swim and dive. "But golf was her game," Robert says.

Peggy was also a violinist and she majored in music at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. She graduated in 1946 and returned to Spokane. She lived at home, worked at Samson Ayers House of Music and played violin with the Spokane Symphony.

She joined the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary at Marylhurst in 1951, and was one of the oldest in that year's 23 new sisters.

"She was a stabilizing influence on the rest of us," says Sister Rita Vistica, who entered the order the same year, just after graduating from high school. "There was so much silence and stress on us in those days." In the 1950s, she says, sisters were allowed to speak to each other for 30 minutes after dinner and on Thursday and Sunday afternoons. She could count on Sister Peggy to break the silence and brighten the mood.

For more than 40 years, Sister Peggy filled a variety of posts at Marylhurst, St. Mary's Academy and Jesuit High School in Oregon. She earned a master's degree in education with an emphasis on counseling from Seattle University. She taught physical education, coached golf, guided students applying to colleges, and worked with alumni and in development offices.

Sister Peggy retired from classrooms and offices in 1994 and devoted her life to voluntary service. She worked at Loaves & Fishes, with the St. Vincent Hospital Guild and at St. Mary's Cathedral parish. The gifts that had made her a beloved teacher, coach and counselor served her well as a volunteer.