Sister Jeanne O’Laughlin fondly recalled for her civic passion, including Elián González

The spirit of the late Sister Jeanne O’Laughlin, former president of Barry University and passionate defender of human rights, was as vivacious as it was generous and kind.

On Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of O’Laughlin’s relatives, friends, former colleagues and students gathered to commemorate her life and legacy in a Mass at Barry’s Miami Shores campus. The Adrian Dominican nun passed away in June in Michigan at age 90. She had survived lung cancer in 1996.

At the university’s Cor Jesu Chapel, those who witnessed O’Laughlin’s civic service and her role in expanding a small college into a multi-campus university with more than 7,000 students gathered to honor her.

“Since I joined the Barry University community, Sister Jeanne’s name has come up almost daily and many have shared stories about her like the impact that she’s had in their lives,” said Barry University president Mike Allen. “Her warmth, her kindness ... was truly overwhelming.”

O’Laughlin led Barry for 23 years before retiring in 2004. In the early 1980s, she moved to Miami from Detroit, arriving in a region that had been rocked by the influx of Cuban refugees from the Mariel Boatlift and the Liberty City riots.

In the aftermath of the devastating Hurricane Andrew in 1992, she worked to rebuild black churches in South Miami-Dade, and in other efforts around the county.

“Jeanne took seriously the call to be of service and hers was a life reaching out to others,” said Sister Mary Ann Caulfield, prioress of the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ chapter in Florida. “Her selfless love was characterized in her generous spirit, supportive words, moral pulse and charitable actions.”

Perhaps most notably, O’Laughlin gained local and national name recognition for her role in the international custody battle of Elián González, the 5-year-old who was found clinging to an inner tube in the waters off Fort Lauderdale on Thanksgiving Day 1999. His mother and 10 others died at sea in their attempt to flee Cuba and make it to South Florida.

O’Laughlin opened her home so Elián could meet with his two grandmothers from Cuba, at the urging of Janet Reno, a Miami native who was then the U.S. Attorney General. She hosted a separate meeting with Elián and his Miami relatives, who wanted Elián to remain in Miami and not be returned to his father in Cuba.

From being a neutral host, O’Laughlin later turned into a fierce supporter of Elián to remain on U.S. soil and explained her decision to advocate against his removal back to Cuba in a New York Times opinion article published in 2000. Elián was later returned to his father in Cuba in the summer of 2000.

“She never counted the cost of giving or advocating for others,” said friend and president of Siena Heights University Sister Peg Albert. “As many of you know, in situations that she encountered, many of us would just move on and leave it for someone else to handle. Not Jeanne.

“The cost itself was great,” Albert said at Tuesday’s sermon. “But it never stopped her.”

Herald staff writer Howard Cohen contributed to this report.

This story was originally published October 1, 2019 at 9:14 PM.