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Remembering Jean (1920-1994) on her 100th Birthday

Commentary: Jean Edmunds was born 100 years ago today, 13 December, in far Northern Maine.

Her family owned a lot of farmland, and grew plenty of potatoes. Like their community, they were white, Protestant (Episcopalian), and Republican.

Jean attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts. After graduating, she learned that the Chinese Ambassador, T.V. Soong, and his wife were seeking a Wellesley grad as live-in governess.

The Chinese said of T.V.’s sisters, the famous Soong Sisters: “One loved money, one loved power, and one loved China.” One married a wealthy New York banker. One married Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Chinese Nationalist forces supported by the U.S. The third sister, Ching-ling, married Sun Yat-sen, leader of the 1911 Revolution and first President of the Chinese Republic. (Later Soong Ching-ling leadership positions in the People’s Republic.)

Jean took the governess position. She grew to love Madame Soong and the Soongs’ three daughters. Madame Chiang, who always urged her sister that Jean should eat with the help, less so. Jean kept a diary about the interesting people she met – until the evening she came home and found the family reading aloud from it at the dinner table.

World War II was in full swing. General Joe Stilwell visited often. Jean went out with Stillwell’s top aide, a Hawaiian-born Chinese, who eventually proposed to her. They didn’t marry, but stayed good friends. (In the diary she railed about white Americas’ prejudice against such a marriage.)

In 1945, Jean met a Marine pilot, back from flying bombers in the Pacific. Early on, when she visited her parents in Maine, he borrowed a plane and flew to Fort Fairfield to surprise her. Her family liked him; they respected his war record, and his bridge-playing; but when Jean said they planned to marry, her parents stayed up all night talking it over. Her suitor was Jewish. In the morning her parents gave their blessing.
The newlyweds moved to Manhattan, where he wrote for Time and they saw lots of theater. Jean loved the city life, but when she became pregnant, they moved to a suburb.

For years, Jean played the female lead in all the amateur theatricals. At parties, she played the piano and sang, while everyone gathered around to sing with her, including the dog. Commercial artists sometimes used her as a model. Mostly she devoted herself to her husband and their children. Much later, those children wished for her that she had pursued her own career, but were grateful for the full-time attention of such a talented and intelligent person.

The first years, they lived on a winding country lane where they were surprised to learn that most neighbors were Communists. (At the height of McCarthyism, a top U.S. Communist Party leader lived across the street.) The neighbors thought it odd that Jean wanted to start a Cub Scout den, which she did, including two boys of color. When all the town’s dens got together, some of the adults sniffed at seeing two nonwhite boys in her den.

Jean and Warren stayed married until her death from cancer in 1994. By then, life was wildly different from what she’d known in her Maine childhood. But she’d weathered the changes, staying imaginative and caring.
How I wish we could put 100 candles on a cake and eat it with her! Even a Zoom-style party couldn’t dim the brightness of the first eyes I remember.