My Aunt Jeanne

I learned pretty much everything about the maternal side of the family from my aunt Jeanne, my mother's younger sister. Jeanne was born in 1940 in an apartment across the street from Jackson Park on the south side of Chicago. My grandparents spelled her name the typical way, but Jeanne preferred to spell it the way the French did. She idolized my mother, who was kind enough to include her in the various fanciful games she played with her sophisticated friends. Here she is as the character "it," the page turner.

You can see the whole photo tableau here.

Jeanne went on to study English at the University of Illinois in Urbana, and became an actress, an English teacher, and a director of drama productions at Nicholas Senn High School (several of her students mention her as favorite teacher in this link). She also did some professional acting in Chicago.

She visited us often when was a child. Aunt Jeanne taught me all about astrology, and she taught me how to read Tarot cards. I learned important things from her about the early life of my mysterious mother, who rarely talked about her childhood. Jeanne and her first husband Frank once took me on a hike up Mount Greylock, the highest mountain in Massachusetts, and they let me do the hike barefoot. I was probably eleven or twelve, and felt so incredibly fortunate to have such a cool aunt.

Mysticism ruled Jeanne's life, as did the phases of the moon.

She was a dedicated Rosicrucian. I spent one of my winter vacations with her in Chicago, and she took me to her Egyptian-themed lodge, but I was only permitted to enter the lobby.

She took me out to dinner at fabulous restaurants, and brought me to meet my great aunt Lil, my grandmother's sister. Great aunt Lil gave me a Persian lamb coat and a suitcase full of vintage clothes from the 1940s. Lil and her husband Mike loved to gamble, and they spent much of the year in Las Vegas.

My aunt's half sister Janie was the same age as my mother. My grandfather had two families on the same Chicago block. Eventually my grandmother divorced him, and after my mother and Jeanne were grown up she married a nice guy and moved to Florida.

Janie, who was very beautiful, worked as a waitress at the original Playboy Club in Chicago. After art school she left Chicago to work as a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas. Janie's mother, who was named Jane, became close with my aunt Jeanne when she was an adult.

I remember Jane calling Jeanne while I was there to ask her what phase the moon was in.

Jeanne, Janie, and June (my mother) remained close, and as older women they would meet once a year in Las Vegas. Janie died first, and my mother died in 2016.

Jeanne's life came to an end around May 27th, 2026. It is believed that she had a heart attack at home. A friend went to check in on her, and must have called the police when she didn't answer the door or her phone.

She lived a very full and a very colorful life, and I like to think that it was full and colorful until the very end.

I am writing this post for my own sense of closure, but I am also writing it so that former students and people who knew Jeanne (over the past eighty-six years she has been known as Jean Blume, Jeanne Blume, Jeanne Reckitt, Jeanne Reckitt-Castillo, and Jeanne Castillo) can find something about her on line. She never used a computer, never had anything to do with social media, and never even had an email address.

I did tell her about posting that picture of her as "It," ten years ago, and she was OK with it. She was acting in her first part.