Benedictine Sister Jean (Norma) Gibson, 89, died Nov. 10, at St. Scholastica Convent, St. Cloud. A private Eucharist of Christian Burial will be celebrated at St. Benedict’s Monastery on Nov. 16 followed by burial in the monastery cemetery.
Norma Jean, the second of George and Mary (Pizzuto) Gibson’s four children, was born Dec. 1, 1930, in Columbia, Utah. She attended Notre Dame de Lourdes Catholic School until her sophomore year and graduated from Carbon Senior High School in Price, Utah.
In 1952, she entered St. Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph, and was received into the novitiate June 17, 1953, receiving the name Jean. Sister Jean made her first monastic profession July 11, 1954, and her perpetual monastic profession July 11, 1959.
Sister Jean received a degree in chemistry from the College of St. Benedict, St. Joseph, in 1956. She worked at the St. Cloud Hospital as an x-ray technologist for two years, then taught science and math at St. Boniface High School in Cold Spring. Later she attended graduate school and earned both a master’s degree and doctorate in physics from the University of Iowa. She returned to Minnesota to teach pre-medical classes and physics for six years at St. John’s University in Collegeville.
In 1975, Sister Jean returned to Utah, where she spent one year at the University of Utah for training in radiation therapy and also received training at the M.D. Anderson Tumor Institute in Houston, Texas. She then worked in the radiation therapy department as the medical physicist at the Val A. Browning Cancer Treatment Center at St. Benedict’s Hospital, Ogden, Utah, a job she held until her retirement in 1999.
Sister Jean was one of 11 founding members of Mount Benedict Monastery, Ogden, Utah. She served as the financial director for the monastery and as the monastery’s webmaster and computer network administrator. She also volunteered at Birthright of Ogden as the group’s treasurer.
Sister Jean is survived by her sister, GeorgAnna Leseberg, six nieces and nephews and the sisters of her Benedictine community. She was preceded in death by her parents, her brother, Edward, sister, Dorothy Gentry, and two nephews.
Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to Benson Funeral Home. Please direct memorial gifts to the Sisters of the Order of St. Benedict Outreach Ministries.