“Jean knew the Conference better than anybody.”
That’s what longtime coworkers told us when we asked about the life of Jean Reis: “She was an institution.” “She had her finger on the pulse and wise counsel to offer.” Jean made careful plans for her legacy to be consistent with the life she lived, and through the bequest she left to the Foundation, she remains influential in the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference to this day. We honor her life and legacy here.
Jean was born in Oklahoma in 1914, and spent most of her childhood in El Paso, Texas where her parents taught at the Lydia Patterson Institute (a private Methodist school for Hispanic students). Jean and her family valued education. Despite coming of age during the Great Depression, in an era when less than 10% of women went to college, Jean received a B.A. in Science from Texas College of Mines near El Paso, followed by an M.A. in Biology from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She was an active member of the American Association of University Women for over 60 years.
Jean taught high school science in El Paso until 1937, when she left for postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago. There, she met fellow student George Reis. The two were married in 1939, right as World War II broke out. Once the US entered the war, George was stationed in a hospital unit in the South Pacific, and Jean worked for the federal government inspecting munitions factories and conducting safety training for workers. Jean and George, both working in dangerous conditions, went for long periods of time without being able to contact one another.
They reunited after the war and moved to Seattle in 1946, where George found work taking pictures through microscopes as a medical photographer for the newly-formed UW School of Medicine. The young couple joined University Temple UMC, where they remained active, loyal members for the rest of their lives.
While men returning home from war were welcomed back into the workforce, women’s job opportunities became more limited. Jean had completed a Masters Degree plus some postgraduate studies, and had proven herself capable of high-risk technical work during the war… but when she and George arrived in Seattle, her employment options were very limited. In 1950, she settled for a secretarial role at Trinity Episcopal Parish in downtown Seattle.
Jean worked there for 15 years, building a stellar reputation. Through her connections at U Temple, in 1965 she applied for work at the local United Methodist conference office, where longtime employees like Cathy Lang still remember her. “Jean will be remembered by many as the voice in the episcopal office of the Pacific Northwest Conference,” Cathy writes, “where she was administrative secretary to five bishops [from] 1965 until her retirement in 1994.”
Bishop Palmer was five years into his first episcopal appointment when he hired Jean as his secretary. Rev. Jack Tuell served under Bishop Palmer as a District Superindentent before being elected to the episcopacy, and Dr. Marjorie Tuell remembered Jean during that era, even as she was learning on the job, as “highly efficient.” She later remarked: “As the wife of a bishop, I appreciate what those administrative assistants do for the Bishop!”
In 1968, Bishop Palmer moved to Oregon and was followed by Bishop Maynard Sparks, who’d served as a bishop in the Evangelical United Brethren Church for ten years before the denominational merger. When Bishop Palmer died in office, Bishop Sparks served as interim bishop for the Portland area for 18 months in addition to his regular work in Seattle, increasing both Jean’s workload and her experience.
Colleagues describe her as a standard-bearer for the office, immaculate in both her work and her comportment. “She was so particular about the Bishop’s office that everything was done absolutely correctly,” remembers Doris Hollister. “In those days we didn’t dare say anything about appointments until conference time, and she kept it very secretive.” Inge Hart adds that she “went by the strict old rules” and kept paperwork about upcoming appointments hidden, going so far as to make copies herself rather than delegating this task to the regular copy machine crew so that nothing got “leaked” before the morning of Annual Conference. “Privacy was her thing.”
In 1972, Bishop Wilbur Choy became the first Asian American elected to the UMC’s episcopacy, and was appointed to the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference. With seven years and two conferences’ experience under her belt, Jean showed him the ropes. Reading between the lines, we can also assume that she helped him navigate any resistance he would have experienced as a person of color trailblazing into leadership. He was “committed to provide for fuller participation of the laity, women, youth and ethnic minorities” in the life and leadership of the church according to UM News. Jean became his right hand, making things at the office go as smoothly as possible, especially through his bereavement when his wife Grace passed away in 1977.
Jean experienced her own bereavement when her beloved husband George passed away in 1980. They had been married for 41 years. She couldn't bring herself to go through his things—especially his home photography studio—so she lived alongside them for the rest of her career and most of her retirement, only taking leave of them when she moved into an assisted living facility near the end of her life. Every person we interviewed for this piece used the word “loyal” to describe Jean, and it’s clear that this value was both professional and personal.
In the midst of her personal tragedy, another transition happened at the conference office: Bishop Melvin Talbert was elected to the episcopacy and appointed to the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference in 1980. He was the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference’s first African American Bishop, and he brought with him a long history of activism and a “commitment to racial, gender and sexual orientation inclusiveness”… but no episcopal experience. Jean helped orient him to his new job. Her coworker Claire Gebbens remembers a story about a cabinet meeting during which a D.S. proposed a new method for appointing ministers, and Jean muttered under her breath "that's been tried before." Bishop Talbert pricked his ears, and asked her about it later. She described a similar experience from a former cabinet era. “He listened to her, and appreciated her input,” writes Claire. This made sense, because at that point, she’d likely been sitting in cabinet meetings longer than anyone else in the room! “She had a lot of influence in the cabinet,” remembers Inge Hart.
While everything changed around her, Jean remained steadfast. Almost every day, she wore tan shoes and a brown suit in a subtle plaid pattern to work. It complimented her strawberry blonde hair. She brought a healthy brown bag lunch and ate it just after the usual lunch hour when the office was quiet. This almost always included an orange, which she methodically peeled and enjoyed section by section. Coworkers noted that she could seem aloof and serious at first, but once you got to know her, she was warm and gracious, with a twinkle in her eye.
In 1988, when Bishop Calvin McConnell moved from the Oregon Idaho Annual Conference to the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference, Jean was there to facilitate the transition and serve alongside him until her retirement in 1994. Faith Foundation’s own executive director, Tom Wilson, remembers being assigned a room across the hall from hers during one Annual Conference in the early 90s. “I could hear her typewriter still going at midnight,” he laughs. “Her dedication to the United Methodist Church and to the Office of the Bishop was remarkable.” Near the end of her career, with her decades of service and reputation for perfection, she trained not only her own secretaries, but also traveled to California and Oregon to help install and train new secretaries for those episcopal offices.
Claire Gebbens summarized Jean’s long career this way: “She was so bright, one of that generation of women who were kept many rungs down on the ladder despite their obvious, capable brilliance.” She didn’t overstep her boundaries with the Bishop and the superintendents, “even though she could have done the job.” While playing her part, she quietly supported our first two Bishops of color, helped advance inclusion in leadership across the region, and mentored younger women. Perhaps she could sense, in some not-too-distant future, a time when a woman would hold the episcopal office itself.
Whatever future Jean Reis imagined for the organization that she served so faithfully, she believed in it enough to help fund it beyond her lifetime. As a child of the depression, Jean always lived frugally, and upon her death in 2006 a generous bequest was left to the Foundation. We have endeavored to make grants from the earnings on this gift to support United Methodist communities of faith in the Northwest ever since. From repairs on a grocery rescue truck in Tukwila, to after-school programming for marginalized kids in Vancouver, her gift continues to serve our area.
Jean knew the Conference better than anybody, and supported it not only through a career that spanned five Bishops, but with a legacy gift beyond her lifetime. That’s quite the vote of confidence. We’re honored to help share her story and steward her gift.