Jacqueline Jean Jury

Jacqueline Jean Jury passed away peacefully with her children by her side on December 13, 2024, in Easton, MD. She was known to her family and friends as Jackie and to her grandchildren as Ammie.

Jacqueline was born on November 17, 1932, in Clearfield, PA. She was adopted and raised by her grandparents. After her grandmother Grace passed away, she left Clearfield to attend Gettysburg College where she studied to become a Lutheran Deaconess and sang in the college choir.

Jacqueline married Charles Leps in 1956. She gave birth to her daughter Jennifer in 1957 while living in a cottage on the Rose farm, a historic landmark at the center of some of the fiercest fighting of the Civil War on the second day of the battle of Gettysburg.

Jacqueline moved with her husband to Chicago where he attended Divinity School and subsequently to West Collingswood, NJ for his first assignment as a Lutheran pastor. It was here that she gave birth to her son Charles in 1961.

Jacqueline moved with her husband to Rhode Island and then to Massachusetts where he served in the campus ministry. After a painful divorce in 1970, she moved to Bucks County, PA with her two children.

Jacqueline completed her undergraduate studies at Lehigh University and graduated with a degree in social work. She was a spiritual and caring person who helped improve the lives of many people as a social worker. She most enjoyed working with people who did not have their share of justice and people from developing countries.

After her children left home for college, Jacqueline went to the Catholic Worker in New York. She lived first at Tivoli Farm and later at Maryhouse in New York City, serving poor people alongside Dorothy Day. It was during this time that she converted to Catholicism.

Jacqueline next moved to Philadelphia to work with the urban poor in social ministry at St. Francis de Sales Parish. She dedicated herself to helping newly arrived Vietnamese refugees.

Jacqueline inherited enough money from her long-estranged father to buy a rambling old bed-and-breakfast near Gettysburg and turned it into a Catholic retreat house. She joined the Church of Cristo Rey and began to serve the local farm workers, interceding for them with the courts, finding them jobs and housing, and pushing the growers to improve the migrant labor camps and protect their workers from pesticides. She worked with a local Lutheran church to establish the first emergency housing for women in the area.

When her granddaughter Claire was born, Jacqueline moved to Wenonah, NJ to be nearby. Her grandson Daniel was born the next year. She enjoyed pushing her grandchildren in a stroller around the block while singing “she’ll be coming round the mountain” and, as they grew older, joining in whatever games their young imaginations devised.

Jacqueline joined the Orthodox Church of the Holy Cross in Medford, NJ and moved nearby to Marlton, NJ, where she lived for many years, before moving to Maryland in 2022 to be near her daughter.

Jacqueline was predeceased by her mother Marion Jury Jones, father William Jones, and half-brother Theodore Peoples. She is survived by her daughter Jennifer Grace Leps, son Charles Edwin Leps Jr., granddaughter Claire Elena Leone, and grandson Daniel Theodore Leone.

Jacqueline’s family asks that regardless of your faith, in her honor you be mindful of Jesus’ teachings about helping other people such as the parable of the Good Samaritan.

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