Jeanette Haden

Jeanette Marie Haden née Moreau passed away late on Sunday, February 23, 2025 at Mt. Graham Regional Medical Center after her fourth battle with cancer.  Jeanette was born in Detroit, Michigan on January 4, 1946 – the first wave of the tsunami that would become the Baby Boom generation. She is the youngest daughter of Joseph Moreau and Helen Rawlings. 

Jeanette is a descendant of the Lewis family, one of the oldest families in Detroit. Her father was a Comptroller for the Chrysler Corporation and her mother a nurse. Following in her mother’s footsteps, she enrolled in nursing school after high school. She studied at Cook County Hospital in Chicago in the three-year nursing program. Jeanette always said that the old three-year nursing program made the most practical and therefore best nurses – three-year nurses are the real nurses. She worked for a few years with her mother at a hospital in Detroit where she met her husband, John Pietrzyk. 

After starting a family in Detroit, and with the ongoing decline of the Motor City, they set out to the growing metropolis in Phoenix, AZ.  Jeanette would spend the rest of her working life in various Emergency Departments – it’s a Department, not just a Room! – in Arizona,  first at Maricopa County Hospital emergency department, then opening the new emergency department at Humana Hospital in Paradise Valley.

Although part Belgian, French and English, it was her Mother’s Irish roots she identified with the most. She had a sharp Irish tongue and taught her kids that good sarcasm was a sign of affection. She also learned from her mother the skill of cooking, which is to say of taking perfectly good food and boiling the taste out of it. Her meatloaf was the stuff of family legend, and rarely edible.

Although the emergency department was her job, her life was her family. He sacrificed to send her children to Catholic grade school and make sure they had every opportunity. She was always proud of them, boasting about her kids to anyone who would listen, and many who didn’t. She always saw them as her babies, hiding Easter baskets for them to find even into their college years.

After her divorce, she met the man who would become the love of her life, Chuck Haden. They met one Friday night at the Luke AFB Officer’s Club and began dating a short time later. They were married a year and a half later, on March 15, 1997. When even the suburbs of Phoenix got too big for the both of them, they moved out to Thatcher, Arizona.  Jeanette worked for a few years at the hospitals in Gila Valley, until her age caught up with her. Chuck and Jeanette were never without their newest child, the various cocker spaniels that they spoiled. She and Chuck spent the last several years watching lots of Fox News, NASCAR, and NCIS, touring around southeast Arizona, and enjoying meals at their favorite restaurants with all their circle of “old” friends in Thatcher and Safford.

She was delighted to spend this past Christmas with Chuck and all her children, and especially her beloved grandson. It was the first time her whole family had been together for Christmas in many years, and she loved it. Jeanette always cried when her kids had to go back home. 

The last thing Jeanette would want would be people making too much of a bother over her death. She’d want people to remember her fondly, to say a prayer for her soul and for Chuck, and to live as well as she tried to live.

She is survived by her husband Chuck Haden, her older brother Joseph Moreau, her three children – John Pietrzyk, Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, OP, and Jennifer Pietrzyk – and her favorite (and only) grandson, Liam Pietrzyk.

There will be a vigil service on Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 6:00 p.m. The Funeral will be on Wednesday March 12, 2025, it will begin with a Rosary at 10:30 a.m. and Funeral Mass will follow at 11:00 a.m. The vigil and Mass will be at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, 311 S Central Avenue, Safford, AZ 85546. 

In lieu of flowers, please donate to The Dominican Friars Foundation (https://dominicanfriars.org/donate/), 141 East 65th Street, New York, NY 10065.