Meet Kerouac’s “Miss Dinneen”
Jack’s grammar school teacher
We all can (hopefully, and gratefully) recall a teacher or two from our elementary school days. Novelist Jack Kerouac was no exception.
In his autobiographical Satori in Paris (1966) he wrote, “My grammar school teacher was Miss Dinneen … .”
We were left wanting to know more about this obscure character from Kerouac’s past. Here is what we learned:
Alice K. Dinneen was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1896. Miss Dinneen would have been in her mid-30s when she had young John Kerouac as a student in Lowell.
But here is a surprising detail we uncovered: in 1958, at age 62, Alice left Massachusetts for New Mexico where she joined a newly-founded religious order - Sisters of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT). She professed her vows four years later, at age 66, taking the name Sister Mary of St. James. So it seems both teacher and student were “on the road” in the 1950s, though traveling separately, and with wildly divergent destinations.
