Remembering Jean Marie: The Woman We Never Knew

The Bismarck High School annual is named the Prairie Breezes. Back in May of 1960, when our senior year annuals were given out, we all eagerly grabbed them to look at the pictures and, particularly, to find pictures of ourselves. Graduation pictures were a big deal back then. We all wanted to look as good as possible. After we had all perused our annuals thoroughly and had our friends write clever comments in them (In 1960, I wrote, “Good luck and all that rot!” in every annual I was handed), I suppose that most of us put them away and forgot about them for a long time.

            I wonder how many members of our graduating class are still able to lay their hands on their 1960 Prairie Breezes? (It has a white cover.) Prior to the 50^th reunion in 2010, I was surprised to discover that I didn’t have mine. I had ’57, ’58, and ’59, but not ’60. I borrowed one from my brother Tom. I took it to the 50^th and a number of people borrowed it from me to look someone or something up. What most of us were looking at 50 years later were the graduation pictures. The boys were wearing sport coats and ties. The girl’s hair had been carefully done. Everyone looked so respectable! There were all those young eager faces staring out at the world, confidently and expectantly, their adult lives before them. Some had broad smiles; others were very serious.

            I still take my 1960 annual out and look at those pictures, usually right after I receive a notification that another member of our class has died.  If the name doesn’t bring to mind a face (and it usually doesn’t), I have to check the annual to remind me of just who they were. These days the pictures do more than just jog my memory about their identity. They beg questions of what all those people did with their lives. Were they successful? Were they happy? The sad part of this is the fact that today when I look at the graduation pictures of the Class of 1960; I am in most cases looking at the pictures of people about whom I know absolutely nothing. How could I be in school for four years with people and end up knowing nothing about them? It’s almost embarrassing.

This fact was brought home to me recently when my brother Tom sent me a picture which he found while going through some stuff which he has been saving over the years. This particular picture was taken on September 13, 1959. It shows Tom and I and Larry Schneider, Ron Vantine and Frank Rosenau posed with Jean Marie Boss at the old Bismarck Masonic Temple on the occasion of Jean’s installation as Worthy Advisor of Rainbow. We were there as representatives of DeMolay and had a part in the installation. She is wearing a formal and we are in coats and ties. That’s the way it was in those days. We were young adults.

It was sad looking at that picture because I was aware that Jean Marie had died in July of 2005. I found myself thinking about the question of what she had done with her life. Expectations would have been high! She was one of the valedictorians of our class. Jean was a tall, very attractive young woman. She was involved in many activities during her four years in high school. She has seven lines of involvement listed after her name in the back of the annual. Among other things, she played in the BHS Concert Band, was Associate Editor of the Hi-Herald and was a Homecoming Attendant. As I looked at her picture, it dawned on me that I didn’t even know where she had gone to college. I realized that the last time I had seen her was probably the night of our graduation.  I don’t think that she came to any class reunions. My ignorance bothered me. I e-mailed a few of my class mates with whom I have kept in contact and they knew as little as I did. Nobody with whom I checked knew anything about her life after she walked off the stage in the World War Memorial Building on graduation night, May 26, 1960. How was that possible? She was one of the most outstanding and popular members of our class.

I searched online for her obituary in the archives of the Bismarck Tribune and was successful. I would guess that not many people saw it. The heading on it read Jean Mudge. She died on July 9, 2005. It stated in the obituary that Jean had received her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. That is an excellent school and didn’t surprise me. She was survived by her mother Bernadine Richtman, her husband Michael and a son named Grant. Since her mother’s name at the time of Jean’s death was not Boss, it was obvious that her mother had remarried. I continued my search and found her mother’s obituary. She had died in Fargo in 2011 at age 91. She was originally from Ashley, North Dakota. Jean Marie’s father, Homer, was from Bismarck. During WWII, Homer and Bernadine Boss moved to Los Angeles, California where Homer initially worked in the aircraft industry. Jean Marie was born there in 1942. Her father also served in the U.S. Army in Europe and was a prisoner of war. After the war the family returned to Bismarck. Jean Marie’s father died in 1952. While Jean was in school in Bismarck, her mother was a widow. Jean’s mother Bernadine married a man named Russell Richtman in 1962 and moved to Fargo where Mr. Richtman was in the printing business. That explains why we did not see Jean Marie in Bismarck after she graduated. Her home had moved to Fargo.

Jean Marie’s obituary talked about her employment and the last job mentioned was in Phoenix, Arizona. I again searched on the internet and found the address of a Michael Mudge living in Mesa. I wrote him a letter explaining that I was a former classmate of Jean’s and asked him if he would be willing to have a conversation with me about Jean and her life history after leaving Bismarck. He graciously responded to me and sent me the following letter which I reprint with his permission.

 

Dear Rev. Tudor,

Thanks for your letter of December 11th.

You located the right person. I was fortunate to have had Jean Marie in my life from 1963 when we started dating at Northwestern University until her death from breast cancer in 2005. She will always be in my heart and I miss her very much.

At Northwestern Jean majored in English and Political Science, She was active in her sorority, Gamma Phi Beta and she was a founding member of Northwestern’s Young Conservatives Club.

We graduated in June 1964 and Jean accepted an editor position at Follett Publishing Company in Chicago and moved to the Old Town area on the Near North Side. During that fall of 1964 Jeannie volunteered as a Goldwater Girl and she never saw Hillary Rodham at any Chicago area Youth for Goldwater campaign activities.

Anticipating being drafted, I enlisted in the US Air Force after graduation from Northwestern’s Business School. I shipped off to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio for USAF Officer Training School. After I received my commission as a second lieutenant and specialty training in airlift logistics, Jean Marie and I were married in Evanston at the First Methodist Church on May 22, 1965.

I had orders for Hickam AFB, Hawaii where I served as an air transportation officer from 1965 through 1968. Jean Marie was the primary breadwinner as an English and German teacher at Farrington High School in Honolulu.

In 1968 I received orders for a Southeast Asia tour of duty at Don Muang Royal Thai Air Base. Jean Marie established our apartment in Bangkok, Thailand. In 1969 we moved to Alameda, California where I served my last assignment in the Air Force.

In 1970, after completing the adoption of our infant son, Grant, we relocated to New York City where I accepted a management position with Trans World Airlines. We had an apartment in the city for a few years and bought a home on the South Shore of Long Island in 1973 at Nassau Shores in Massapequa, LI, NY.

In 1979 TWA transferred me to their Kansas City administrative Center and Jean Marie established our home in Parkville, MO. Jeannie was active in the Platte County Republican organization and established and managed the Republican campaign headquarters for that county for the 1980 election cycle. We were invited to and attended the Reagan inaugural in 1981. During my years with TWA we were able to travel extensively and Jeannie especially enjoyed our trips to Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece.

In 1984 we moved to Phoenix Arizona were I accepted a Director position with American Express. Jean continued her active role in Republican politics and we were both elected as precinct committeemen in Northeast Phoenix. Jean developed a very active private tutoring practice after Grant graduated from Phoenix Country Day School in 1988. She also enjoyed her activities as a member of The Desert Botanical Garden.

We had a wonderful life together and enjoyed sports and cultural events together as a family. She inspired our son with her love of literature and history. He graduated from the University of Richmond in Richmond, VA in 1992 and today he’s on the staff at Notre Dame University in South Bend, IN as Ryan Producing Artistic Director of The Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival.

I hope this letter gives you enough material for your class of 1960 web site contribution.

Sincerely,

Michael Sterling Mudge
6553 East Melrose Street
Mesa, AZ 85215-1656
Home 480-306-8636
Mobile 480-414-5248

 

            After reading Michael’s letter, I knew that I had to reprint it exactly as I received it for members of our class to read. What a terrific, heartfelt statement about Jean!

 

After Word

 

            Now the only issue to be dealt with is just why I decided to pursue the question of Jean Marie’s life after 1960. Perhaps as a member of her class, I felt a sense of obligation. I think that a number of us admired her a great deal for her accomplishments; better late than never in telling her! And I can honestly say that it did bother me looking at her in that picture which my brother sent me and having to admit to myself that I knew absolutely nothing about her life after high school.

            There is another reason which I will illustrate by telling the following parable. Years ago, I read a short story written by the well known author Ray Bradbury about a man who returns to his home town after being absent for many years. His parents are dead. He has no family there but he wants to go back for nostalgic reasons. He feels a need which he can’t quite explain. He is looking for something. And so he goes. When he gets there, he drives around for a while looking at the town and then he drives to his old neighborhood.  He parks in front of the house in which he had grown up. He stands and looks at it for a while. And then he thinks to himself, “I wonder if that big old oak tree in the back yard which I used to climb is still there?” He walks around the house into the back year and sure enough, there it is, still standing. He walks over to the tree and stands beneath it looking up at the branches on which he had perched as a small boy. As he stands there, a faint memory stirs in his mind, He begins to remember that many years before he had hidden a small tin box in a hole in the tree near one of the branches on which he used to sit. What had he put in that box? He couldn’t remember. Suddenly he feels the overwhelming impulse to again climb the tree and see if the box is still there. He thinks to himself, “I’m not so old that I can’t climb this tree.” And so he does. After much scrambling he is finally able to pull himself up to the branch that is his goal. He sits there for a while, shaking from the strain of the climb and catching his breath. Then he reaches around to the other side of the tree to where he thought he had hidden the metal box. Sure enough, there is a hole there. He puts his hand in and feels that it is half full of moss. He digs down and discovers a square object at the bottom of the hole. It’s the box! Excited, he digs it out and sits there on the branch for a moment, staring at it. Finally he opens it. Inside is a folded piece of paper. He takes it in his hand and then slowly opens it up. He reads it and then he begins to cry. Written on the piece of paper is a message from long ago, from himself to himself. It said simply, “I remember you!”

 

            We all want and need to be remembered! Jean Marie, we remember you!