Jean was born to Ingrid and John Henry Christ during a snowstorm in Chicago. She grew up in Hicksville on Long Island, NY with sisters Dot and Sue and brother Rick. Older brother Jerry visited regularly.

At Wagner College, she conducted her undergraduate studies in religion and philosophy. She then pursued a Master of Library Science at Columbia University; her dissertation topic was on Sinclair Lewis first editions. During her graduate studies, she met her husband, Steve.

Jean and Steve were married on December 28, 1968 in Hicksville, NY. They settled in Eagan, MN, and later Burnsville, where they raised Diana and Bob. She later worked as a reference librarian for Dakota County Libraries in the 1980s and 1990s. Their family enjoyed vacationing all over the country.

In 1995, Jean made medical history by becoming the first Minnesotan to receive a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) to sustain her for three months until she received a heart transplant. After receiving Heart #315 at University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, she volunteered in Second Chance for Life, a support group for transplant patients and their families, and at LifeSource, the organ procurement organization for the upper Midwest.

Jean’s lifelong interests included gardening and reading. She served on the Eagan Advisory Parks Commission and volunteered many hours with the DFL party in Dakota County.

Since 1976 when she made her first quilt, Jean Loken made dozens of beautiful quilts for family and friends, some of which won prizes at the county and State Fairs. She shared her enjoyment of quilting with several quilt groups. Jean was a charter member of the Minnesota Quilt Project, participating in documenting many old Minnesota quilts, and wrote the Introduction to
Minnesota Quilts, which preserves the history of these treasures. Jean, like many other quilters, often made quilts for people who needed them, including children in crisis.

Recently, until her death, Jean devotedly served as the Minnesota coordinator of the Home of the Brave Quilt Project. This project honors families of fallen Minnesota soldiers who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with a hand-made Civil War reproduction quilt. Her work can be viewed online at www.homeofthebraveMN.org.

Jean discovered, among her husband’s parents’ effects, an 1887 diary written by Reinhold Liebau, a great-grandfather who traveled from Germany to America to buy a farm near Chippewa Falls, WI, on which his family eventually settled. The Liebau Diary was written in the old German script, and Jean painstakingly typed it into modern German and then persuaded her mother, who is fluent in German and English, to translate it. The Liebau Diary serendipitously became an important resource for a museum being created in Antwerp, Belgium, about the Red Star Line, on which Liebau sailed to America.

Among her proud and joyous moments are the weddings of her daughter Diana to Bob Mulcahy, son Bob to Kim Long, and the births of her grandchildren, Elizabeth and Sean Mulcahy.
Pictures of Jean’s life, her quilts, and the diary can be found on this website.

A Celebration of Jean's Life was held August 29, 2010 at Dakota Lodge in Thompson Park in
West St. Paul, MN.