![\"Jean's](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/jean-elsner-house-4_21_11-300x225.jpg\")
Jean’s house, 2011<\/p><\/div>\n
Jean was very nice to my mother. When my mom became a widow, Jean didn\u2019t bail on her like some friends of my mom did. And when my mother got Parkinson\u2019s, Jean didn\u2019t bail either. Jean called the building manager at my mother\u2019s apartment because my mom was on the floor and couldn\u2019t get up.<\/p>\n
Jean and my mom went way back — to Kinsman Road. They shared a locker in seventh grade. When my mom moved to Cleveland from Mississippi in 1930, Jean welcomed her.<\/p>\n
Jean knew<\/strong><\/span> me from day one. Jean said I was a fat baby.<\/p>\n I think I have a picture of Jean\u2019s house with the Franklin Roosevelt picture in the den. In the 1940s she bought the picture for her parents, who \u201cworshipped\u201d Roosevelt, she said. \u201cThey thought Roosevelt was God. They had always been Socialist before then — voted for Debs — but they took a chance on Roosevelt in 1932.\u201d<\/p>\n Jean and FDR, 2011<\/p><\/div>\n Jean wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt in 1937, asking for help with the Homeowners Loan Corporation, which gave Jean\u2019s dad a loan for a house. Jean had a permanent campaign sign in her front picture window: \u201cVote Democrat.\u201d<\/p>\n Jean never<\/strong><\/span> drove. She took the bus. That was odd, at least for Cleveland. She allowed neighbors to park in her driveway.<\/p>\n Her breakfast was orange juice, hot chocolate and toast. She ate peanut butter and jelly and tea for lunch every day.<\/p>\n That\u2019s some of what you need to know about Jean.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jean Elsner, who died last week at 99, lived in her house on Stilmore Road in South Euclid for 61 years — until 2013, when she moved to a seniors building in Chicago to be near her oldest son. Jean’s father built the Stilmore house in 1951. In 2009, she was the oldest student […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleveland-full","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26101"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26133,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26101\/revisions\/26133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jean](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/jean-1-225x300.jpg\")