Jane B. Grossman

Jane Helen Blau Grossman was born on Tax Day, 1933, met her future husband in junior high school, raised a family of four, ran a small business, and was married for just shy of 70 years.

The third daughter of Katherine “Kay” and Robert Blau, she grew up during the depression, marking the end of a period of rapid growth for Cleveland, which affected her family like so many others during the time. Her father was a part owner of a family knitting goods factory which closed during the depression, significantly changing the family circumstances. Her mother worked as a buyer for Halle’s department store—she was one of the first to travel (by airplane!) to New York City in search of the latest designs.

As a child, Jane spent her summers at a sleep-away camp in Maine, where she became quite good at archery. She saved her bow, taller than she was, her whole life—perhaps as a tangible warning to her rambunctious kids or anyone else considering taking her on that she was not a woman to be messed with. She is remembered by many as a “Hockey Mom,” rarely missing a game played by her three sons and her grandchildren, and easily identified by her large red-hooded Hudson Bay parka that she purchased in Canada, where they know how to stay warm at ice rinks.

Owing to Jane’s intelligence, wit, and prowess with medieval weaponry, she was pursued by hordes of boys during her school years. But from the moment she saw him, when both were children, there was only one guy for her: Ronald (“Ron”) Grossman. They met in junior high school, started dating shortly thereafter, and were together until Ron’s death earlier this year, just months before they’d have celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. Their remarkably close and supportive relationship would shape their choices and define the cores of their lives.

Their commitment to each other easily survived the challenge of attending different colleges, with Jane off to Skidmore in New York and Ron attending The Ohio State University. Following graduation, they scrambled to plan a wedding before Ron’s impending stint in the army, settling on December 19, 1954 for their nuptials. The wedding was made more memorable by two events: a blizzard that kept many guests at home and an end-of-season game between the Cleveland Browns and the Detroit Lions that drained off many of the remaining guests. Despite the Browns’ loss and the abridged guest list, the day would ultimately prove auspicious: the underdog Browns went on to win the NFL championship the next week and Jane and Ron launched a long and remarkable life and family.

To the delight of both Ron and Jane, Ron ended up stationed not in Korea or other distant battleground, but in Los Angeles, California, where Jane was able to accompany him and took a job in a bank. After Ron completed his service, they returned to Cleveland to be near family—and to start their own, welcoming twins Bob and Alan, followed less than two years later by a third son, Doug, and four years later by daughter Linda. After growing up mostly in a staid all-female household, Jane was likely challenged by the noise, mess, and broken windows, teeth, and bones of a large hockey-centered family—but she certainly appeared to take all the commotion in stride.

Women of Jane’s generation, most of whom were stay-at-home moms, were overlooked in American society, dismissed as “just housewives.” That characterization was misleading and unfair; in Jane’s case, it was also wrong. Though she certainly stayed home and shouldered the lion’s share of daily chores for her large family, including running den meetings for the Cub Scouts- likely she also wanted to use non-housewife parts of her sharp brain.

While Ron was away working for long hours in the wholesale grocery business—he left home before 5 am and returned late most evenings—Jane did the cooking, cleaning, and general childcare; shuttled kids to the rink for hockey practices, games, and shepherded them to piano and art lessons; attended school performances and recitals; supervised homework and refereed kid squabbles, ferried folks to the dentist and doctor for checkups and treatment of hockey injuries; took the dog on walks and to the vet; and waited around to let the glazier in to replace, yet again, the windows that faced the driveway ice hockey rink. She was also the chill mom who welcomed the dozens of kids who flocked after school and on weekends to the neighborhood “fun house,” and the family-glue mom who hosted dinner for the extended family every Sunday.

Jane kept the family on track with schedules, routines and daily practices to help bestow values. The children weren’t always particularly helpful in this endeavor; there was the time Jane lit the Shabbat candles for the weekly Friday night service, but they got too close the dining room bureau which started to burn. None of the children let her know until a dark shadow was permanently enshrined on the furniture. But then, in her “spare time,” while the kids were at school, in bed, or becoming more independent, Jane toiled away at her second, paying job, working the phones, and pounding the keys of her typewriter and adding machine to run the magazine agency that she purchased and operated herself, along with side hustles assisting other small businesses. That she successfully juggled all these roles many decades before the existence of technology and support systems to make remote work easier, and long before COVID made such work-from-home arrangements commonplace, makes her achievements all the more impressive.

Jane never played ice hockey, but it can’t be denied that she was a good sport about supporting it and the generations of her family who have loved it. Not only did she attend all her kids’ games from Mites and Squirts through high school varsity (including while Linda was the manager for the high school team), she did the same for her grandkids and great-granddaughter who played. The Grossmans will long be remembered in the Shaker hockey community for the huge and often wild parties they threw, complete with Molson Golden ale that Jane and Ron fetched from Canada for the adults for that authentic hockey touch. The Grossmans also supported the Cleveland Barons (AHL) professional team and participated enthusiastically until their deaths in the family’s NHL hockey playoff pools.

Lest anyone get the idea that it was only hockey, Jane and Ron were equally enthusiastic supporters no matter what sparked their children and later, grandchildren’s interest. They were there. In ice rinks, auditoriums, galleries, schools, fields. Inside or out in the elements. At games, performances, shows or anywhere else, their admiration and encouragement was always evident.

If you had to pick a single adjective to describe Jane, you probably could not do better than “devoted.” As a fourth-generation Clevelander, she was devoted to her city and to the Shaker community where she lived most of her life. She was devoted to her neighbors and the many friends that she and Ron cultivated over the years. And, of course, she was devoted to her family in all its generations and iterations. She was so devoted to her kids and grandkids that she never failed to listen thoughtfully to their ideas and concerns, to believe in them, to go to bat for them if they needed support. She was not above taking scissors to the family photo albums to excise anyone she perceived as having wronged any of her loved ones. . . but at least she never nocked arrows to avenge them.

First and foremost, though, Jane was devoted heart, soul, and longbow, to Ron, from the day they met to the day earlier this year that death parted them; it is small wonder that she waited almost no time to follow him. Ron and Jane kept together even during the last years of Jane’s life when her body started to fail and Jane entered Menorah Park (later King David). She spent eight years there and the only thing that could keep them apart was the global pandemic that took a toll on nursing home residents, but Ron and Jane adapted to the Zoom calls so they could keep in contact even then. And Jane stayed grounded with all her family until the very end of her life.

She and Ron are survived by children Alan James, Robert Lee (Rachel) Grossman, Douglas Keith (Anna) Grossman-McKee and Linda (Eric, deceased) Carlson; former mother-in-law of Cindy James; loving grandmother of Andrew James, Elizabeth Grossman, Susannah Grossman, Alex Grossman-McKee, Brent (Catherine Borders) Grossman-Mckee, Morgan (Susie) MCClellon, Evan Grossman-McKee, Geoffrey Grossman-McKee and Chelsea Carlson; great-grandmother of Briar, Esma and Juni MCClellon and Claire McKee—and by the example of the enduring love and life well-lived that defined them.

Contributions in memory of Jane are suggested to the Alzheimer's Association. (www.alz.org)