Jeanne M. Radow

Jan. 17, 1921- Sept. 5, 2013

Jeanne died peacefully at home, after a week-long goodbye full of reminiscing and laughing with her family.

Jeanne Michaels was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Pelham Manor. She graduated from Bennington College in 1942, and went on to the Yale School of Nursing. She finished her RN in 1945, and served in the Army Nurse Corps in the Philippines until 1946. After the war, she worked as a Public Health nurse in Harlem.

In 1947, she met Jack Radow at an American Veterans Committee meeting in Chicago, and they were married four months later. When Jack died in 2008, she wrote in his obituary that they had just “celebrated 60 priceless years of marriage.”

Jack’s career in the retail business took them to Columbus, Ohio; Knoxville, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; and finally Lake Oswego, Oregon, in 1962, where she soon became a founder of Portland’s first Planned Parenthood clinic, and served as the clinic’s director for many years. After retirement, she was a longtime docent at the Portland Art Museum, and tutored at Cleveland High School and Capitol Elementary School. She also served on the boards of Friends of the Library, Loaves and Fishes, Metropolitan Family Service, Lake Oswego Art Council, Clackamas County Review Board, Visiting Nurse Association, Reed College Permanent Women’s Committee, and was a Lake Oswego Public Library trustee.

She received the honors Distinguished Alumna - Yale School of Nursing, Lake Oswego Bigelow Lifetime Achievement Award (with Jack), the Lake Oswego Arts Award, and the Margaret Sanger Award.

A dozen or more friends and family members will miss her keen-eyed personalized "clipping service" of appropriate items from the New York Times. Her interest in literature, art, theatre, PBS, chamber music, and politics was lively and opinionated to the end.

She is survived by her daughter, Anno Ballard, her son, Michael Radow, and grandchildren Emily and Benjamin Ballard and Nicholas and Lewis Radow.

A private celebration will be held at a later date. Jeanne asked that remembrances be made to a charity of one's choice.