Father John Joseph Stephen Reidy died in St. Anne's Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, on December 15, 1977, ten days after being admitted to the hospital's intensive care unit for emergency treatment of bleeding ulcers. Following serv ices at St. Pius V Church in Chicago, he was buried in the community plot in All Saints Cemetery, Des Plaines, Illinois.

John Joseph Reidy was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 14, 1913, and attended the elementary and secondary schools at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the fall of 1931, he enrolled at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island, but a serious case of tuberculosis soon interrupted his study program. After returning to Providence in 1936, he graduated with honors in 1939 and joined the Dominican Order at St. Rose Priory in Springfield, Kentucky, where he was given Stephen as a religious name and made his first profession on August 16, 1940. Six year of philosophical and theological studies followed at the Dominican House of Studies in River Forest, Illinois, and he was ordained to the priesthood in River Forest on June 18, 1946.

After completing the requirements for the Lectorate in Theology in 1947, Father Reidy was sent to the Angelicum in Rome for additional graduate work. In June 1949, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. When he returned to the States, he was immediately assigned to the Pontifical Faculty in River Forest to teach ethics and moral philosophy. During the years he taught in River Forest, Father Reidy also served as professor of theology at Rosary College in River Forest and De Paul University in Chicago, as Director of Cooperator Brothers and as chaplain to St. Joseph's Police Guild.

In January 1965, Father Reidy was given a special assignment as Vicar of the Provincial for the Dominican religious community at Aquinas Newman Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the fall of 1965, he returned to his teaching duties in River Forest and to his editorial work on The Priory Press' college theology texts and McGraw-Hill's English translation of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica.

In 1969, Father Reidy moved to the campus of the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas, as student chaplain and counsellor. After serving a year as Associate Pastor at St. Margaret Parish in Boyce, Louisiana, he returned to Chicago in 1972 to join the staff at the Shrine of St. Jude Thaddeus as editor of the St. Jude Chronicle. Despite the constant pain of a chronic arthritic condition aggravated by unsatisfactory surgery for a broken back and hip, Father Reidy continued to provide priestly ministry for the friends of St. Jude Thaddeus until the time of his death.