Amanda Monreal Durand

Mandy, as her friends call her, spent a long and inspiring life that was important in its simplicity. She cared deeply about her faith, passionately about her husband John, avidly about the company that she and John helped build and grateful for the chance to live her life in a small corner of Arizona. Amanda went to join John with her Lord on December 4, 2021. Amanda was born, a second-generation Phoenician, in her grandmother’s home in 1924 to Oswald and Isabella Gay Monreal. Oswald owned a grocery store in Marinette (now Sun City) AZ. And Isabella was the postmaster. Amanda was the youngest of three Monreal children and completed her education at Peoria School. As a lifelong entrepreneur, like her father, Amanda formed a profound relationship with the apostle, St. Jude, the Patron Saint of lost causes and desperate situations. Always optimistic, Amanda and John Durand, who had no children of their own, understood how important their faith was in their own lives and upbringing. Twice, facing overwhelming challenges, Amanda, with John at her side (literally and spiritually) took on helping the Catholic Church build schools in the west valley, first in 1972 the St. John Vianney Elementary School in Goodyear, AZ and most recently, Amanda was the first donor to the St. John Paul II High School in Litchfield Park which opened in August of 2018. In 1937 Amanda was attracted to a new friend with a new bicycle, John Durand. While the bike initially attracted Amanda, John quickly won her heart. John worked at the J.G. Boswell Cotton Company in Litchfield Park until he was drafted in 1944. After serving with General Patton forces in Europe until 1947, John returned to Arizona and John and Amanda were married at St. Mary’s Catholic Church (now Basilica) in downtown Phoenix. John and Amanda worked together, travelled through Europe and United States together, were enthusiastic co-parents to nieces and nephews and the children of close friends for most of their lives together. John passed away in 2000. Amanda met Californian, Colonel J.G. Boswell in the early 1930’s while she was a young girl working at her father’s grocery store. That was the start of a relationship between Mandy and the Boswell family and the J.G. Boswell Company. Shortly after finishing school, Amanda formally joined the Boswell Company and worked in every aspect of the cotton company operation eventually serving as Manager. When the Boswell’s sold the cotton land and gins to Del Webb in 1959 Amanda, still young, went to work selling real estate in the west valley. John and Amanda loved the cotton land that they had worked on for all their adult lives and had no intention of leaving the west valley. Amanda’s family friends and neighbors will miss deeply her remarkable memory, great story telling and enthusiasm for all thing’s west valley. She will rejoin John, her lifetime companion, at Sunland Memorial Park Cemetery, being laid to rest in an area that used to be the cotton fields they worked and loved. Amanda will be celebrated in a Catholic Mass at The Church of St Joachim & St Anne, 11625 N. 111th Ave., Sun City, AZ on Thursday, December 16, 2021 at 10:30 am with a burial to follow at Sunland Memorial Park, 15826 Del Webb Blvd., Sun City, AZ. Arizona has lost a gentle woman, a devout Catholic and committed wife and friend. The twelve mile long, three mile wide area that is at the center of the west valley, Amanda’s home, has lost a native daughter and pioneer.