In Requiem Eugenia (Jean) ….
In Requiem Eugenia (Jean) Marie Goetz Miesen Jean Goetz Miesen was born on Oct. 9, 1926. She passed away peacefully at age 99.5 on March 16, 2026, at the Alamitos West Nursing Home in Los Alamitos, where she had resided for the last five years.
Jean was a longtime resident of Leisure World, where she lived from 2004 until 2021. She was always active playing bridge and pinochle with her friends and busy at the Community Center. A devout Catholic, she would attend Church every Sunday and many days in between at Holy Family Catholic Church. She became a deacon and administered Communion to those that could not get to church to receive it.
Jean was from a pioneering family. She was born in a small wooden farmhouse near Loyalton, South Dakota, not at a hospital, just at home with the help of a midwife. The house she grew up in had no insulation, no running water, no electricity, no telephone and an outdoor outhouse. Her and her sisters would collect cow chips in the summer so that they could heat the home in the winter. There was no wood in the area. The only language she spoke until she went to school was German.
On Sunday, the family would take the horse-drawn wagon (or sleigh in the winter) into town for Catholic Church services. She and her sisters went to school in a one room local schoolhouse a couple miles away from the farm. She literally walked both ways in the snow in the winter. She truly lived in the “Little House on the Prairie.”
Jean lived in the Aberdeen, South Dakota, area until 1968, when she and her family relocated to Garden Grove, California. She worked at various jobs and eventually retired from the Orange County Animal Shelter in 1995.
In 1995, Jean moved with her daughter Alice and her grandson Justin to Gardnerville, Nevada, where she lived in Alice’s mother-in-law suite. She made many friends there and became fully involved with Catholic church activities. She resided there until she relocated to Leisure World in 2004. Jean enjoyed the social environment which included card games as well as being close to all of her family. She very much enjoyed the family get-togethers and all of her children and grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her five sisters and also the nine brothers and sisters on her husband’s side of the family. She was the last of her generation. Jean is survived by her five children, Bruce Miesen, Diane Miesen Mielke, Tom Miesen, Mary Miesen Mayes and Alice Miesen McIntire. She is also survived by her 10 grandchildren and 26 great grandchildren, whom she loved very much. She will always be loved and missed and in our hearts forever.
There will be a Catholic Mass of Remembrance for Jean at the Holy Family Catholic Church on April 10, at 8:30 a.m. All are welcome to attend.
—Paid Obituary
