Submitted by: Dan Rich
South Bend Tribune 12/22/2000
PHOENIX -- Joanne Devine, 74, wife of former University of Notre Dame football coach Dan Devine, died Tuesday in her home in Phoenix. She was 74. Joanne Devine was born Feb. 21, 1926, in Duluth, Minn. She married Dan Devine on March 8, 1947, in Grand Forks, N.D. They had lived in Arizona for the last 18 years after Mr. Devine retired from coaching.
The Devines had lived in South Bend while Dan Devine coached the Irish from 1975 to 1980, including the national championship year of 1977. "Jo and I always cherished our years in South Bend," Dan Devine said in an interview in November with Tribune columnist Bill Moor. "And we made so many friends from that time of our lives." Mrs. Devine met her husband when they were students at Minnesota-Duluth. She was the homecoming queen and he was the football captain. Moor wrote of Mrs. Devine: "She has been the ultimate coach's wife -- ready to pack up the belongings when another job called, never complaining about her husband's 14-hour days, even keeping charts at the games and extending her family to the young and sometimes homesick giants who played for her husband."
Dan Devine coached high school football in Michigan and then was an assistant at Michigan State before running the programs at Arizona State, Missouri and Notre Dame. There also was a stint with the professional Green Bay Packers. "Could I have done those kinds of jobs without Jo at my side?" he said. "No, even with her M.S., even when she eventually had to go to a wheelchair, she is the one who has always been the strength behind our family -- and me." She suffered from multiple sclerosis for several years and then recently underwent surgery for cervical cancer.
In addition to her husband, she is survived by six daughters, Jennifer Husain of Columbia, Mo., Mary Jo Carver and Sarah Devine-Avery, both of Phoenix, Diana Devine of Mesa, Ariz., Lisa Creagan of Decatur, Mich., and Jill Devine of Higley, Ariz.; a son, Dan Jr. of Columbia; and two brothers, John Brookhart of Centreville, Va., and Smith Brookhart III of Reeds Spring, Mo.
Services will be at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday at Corpus Christi Catholic Church, 3550 E. Knox Road, Ahwatukee, Ariz. A reception will follow the Mass at the church. Friends may call from 5 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Carr-Tenney Mortuary in Tempe, where a rosary will be said at 7 p.m. Donations may be made in Joanne Devine's name to the Multiple Sclerosis Endowment Fund, MU Health Care M.S. Institute, D.C. 250.00, Columbia, MO 65212.