Jean Louise Lamson

HAMPTON - Jean Louise (Dennison) Lamson, 80, of Hampton, died unexpectedly Sunday, Feb. 17, 2008.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Ruth Evelyn and L. Adolf Dennison Jr.; by her husband of 26 years, Thomas Judge Lamson (CMSgt. USAF, Ret.); and by her son, William Charles Lamson.

Loving daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother, she had a big heart and sweet nature. She took joy in life and had a wonderful sense of humor. She will be deeply missed by her surviving children, Lynda L. Myers and husband, Gerald, of Santa Fe, N.M., Thomas D. Lamson and wife, Sonny, of Milpitas, Calif., Loretta L. Beard and husband, Kevin, of Newport News, Va., and Susan L. Schwab of Newport News, Va.; and granddaughter, Kendra Jean Myers of Bristol, Vt.

Services will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 23, at Parklawn-Wood Funeral Home, 2551 N. Armistead Ave., Hampton. Family will receive friends following the service. Arrangements are under the care of Parklawn-Wood Funeral Home, 2551 N. Armistead Ave., Hampton, Va.

Jeanie—or “Jeanie Beanie” as she liked to sign her cards to family and friends—died unexpectedly last Sunday of cardiac arrest. Shortly before her heart suddenly stopped she was chatting playfully with her nurses at the hospital. She died quickly, without pain and without fear.

Jeanie would have turned eighty-one next month—and was already talking about a birthday trip with her kids and granddaughter to the Bahamas. Nothing could keep down her high spirits and her delight in life.

She was born Jean Louise Dennison, in Washington, D.C., in 1927. Her young parents, Lemuel Adolph and Ruth Evelyn Dennison took her home to a little house on “E” Street in southeast D.C. owned by Adoph's (granddaddy's) family To Ruth, a girl from the more citified N.E. part of the the city, “E” Street was out in the sticks. The road was unpaved and the water pump was across the street, but they were young and strong and in love. Together they built a larger house on the corner lot next door and moved in before Jeanie's first Christmas. This was the house that Jeanie grew up in and where Froofie (as we all called her mother Ruth) lived for the next sixty years.

The neighborhood around “E” Street was quiet and safe and friendly. Several of Granddaddy's eleven brothers and sisters lived nearby and Jeanie and her younger brother Bob grew up with their cousins. There were no TVs, of course, and folks would sit out on their porches and visit with their friends while the children played. It was a settled neighborhood: When Jeanie went to her sixtieth high school reunion in 2005, she took along a copy of her kindergarten class photo to show to several of her high school classmates who had gone through school, from kindergarten to senior high, with her. She remembered the name of every child in the photo.

When Jeanie and Bobby were young, Froofie and Granddaddy built a small cottage a Woodland Beach where they spent part of each summer. Jeanie, a true Pisces, took great pleasure in the water then and for the rest of her life. Granddaddy would commute back to D.C. to run the small, successful house painting and wall-paper hanging business that he and Froofie built up together.

When she was ten or so, Jeanie began tap dancing lessons and loved to perform. Froofie made her dance costumes. The dance lessons were downtown and afterward Jeanie and Froofie would go to the 5 and 10 cent store for lunch (she said the food at the counter was great) and then to a movie. For the rest of her life Jeanie loved to watch the old movies and see the old stars.

Jeanie graduated from Anacostia High School, class of 1945. She took the secretarial course. When she and some girlfriends were turned down by one of the more popular sororities, they simply—this is so like Jeanie—formed a sorority of their own. We grew up hearing the names of those gals—Vera, Bebe, Abby and all the others—and mom kept in touch with them over the years, through letters, reunions and lately e-mail. Jeanie had a gift for friendship.

Despite the Depression and the War, Jeanie always said she and Bobby had a very happy childhood.

After graduation, during the Second World War Jeanie lived at home and worked at war-time jobs. In 1948, when she was not quite 21, I was born. Her parents (who supported her though her pregnancy) advised her to put the baby up for adoption. She did allow me to be put in foster care for a while, then decided that she would keep her baby even if she had to move out own her own. Froofie and Granddaddy knew that once she made up her mind, she would do what she said, so they told her to “bring the baby on home.” Jeanie took a job as a secretary to support herself and me, we lived with Froofie and Granddaddy and Bobby, and the 16 mm home movies they took of me as a toddler show a very happy child.

In 1950, Jeanie met Tom Lamson from Buffalo, New York, on a blind date. Tom was in the Air Force, a Master Sergeant at age 25, in charge of the photo lab at Andrews Air Force Base. He had lied about his age, enlisted during the war and trained as a pilot, but the war ended before he flew any missions. He was smart and energetic, with a witty, playful sense of humor to match Jeanie's. He also looked a lot like Errol Flynn. (For those too young to remember Errol Flynn, he was drop-dead gorgeous.) Jeanie and Tom fell in love and married in January, 1951.

Their four children, Thomas Dennis, Loretta Ann, William Charles and Susan Joyce, were born in the next few years. Jeanie had five children under age ten by the time she was 28 years old. I remember her washing diapers using an old wringer washing machine and hanging them on the line, standing at the ironing board ironing not only Tom's starched uniform shirts but his cotton handkerchiefs. And our full-skirted cotton dresses with the little ruffled sleeves....

For a few years after their marriage we lived near Froofie and Granddaddy in a small house they owned on Minnesota Avenue, S.E. Jeanie and Tom loved to spend time with their friends and had parties at our house often (so they wouldn't need to find a baby sitter!). Some of those friendships have lasted a lifetime.

After Susan was born, we moved to Andrews Field in nearby Maryland, where Tommy, Loretta and I attended the base elementary school. In 1958, Tom was sent to Saudi Arabia for a 12 month tour of duty and Jeanie moved us back to Southeast D.C. We had a record blizzard that winter: I can still picture Jeanie, muffled in Tom's Air Force issue parka with the fur-lined hood, putting chains on our old '53 Ford in the freezing weather and snow. Jeanie always had a “can-do” attitude. If something needed doing, she just did it. If something needed fixing, she got out the tool box and figured out how to fix it. Some months she had to wait by the mailbox for the allotment check and postal money orders from Tom to buy us groceries, but she keep us warm and well-fed—and feeling well loved—on next to nothing. Her treat for herself was a six-pack of Pepsi.

After Tom returned from Saudi Arabia we moved back to Andrews Field. All of us kids were in school by then and Jeanie had a little time to herself: she was active in the base NCO Wives Club and enjoyed spending time with friends.

In 1964, Tom shipped out to Wiesbaden Air Base in Germany and found housing for us in the Taunus Mountains, in the small town of Bleidenstadt. Jeanie was completely up to the challenge of moving five kids overseas and setting up house in a country whose language she didn't speak. She simply decided she could and would learn German and picked up enough on her own to carry on conversations with our landlady, Frau Deuser. Jeanie wasn't worried about getting the grammar right: she wanted to speak well enough to make friends and she did.

When the family returned to the States, I had already gone off to college. Tom was assigned to Langley Field, and they moved first into a house in Buckroe, then onto the base, and finally into the house in Riverdale where Jeanie lived until she died. By the time the family moved to Virginia, all of us kids were teenagers and a real handful. Jeanie saw us through those rebellious years with amazing patience, a understandable degree of frustration, a lot of understanding and some misunderstanding, a dash of annoyance and passing anger, and an endless supply of love. She was a wonderful mom.

In the late sixties, Tom's health began to go downhill, and he retired from the service after thirty years. Jeanie saw him thorough several operations and years of pain. They took pleasure just in being together until his death in 1977.

Her dad, Adolph, had died suddenly the previous year and Jeanie was then helping her mom long-distance, driving up to D.C. to take her to doctors and to look after the house. Jeanie also took care of our younger brother, Billy, who had been diagnosed with cancer at age 18 and died in 1980, just before he turned 25. Jeanie's mom, Froofie, died 10 years later. Through all of this Jeanie stayed strong and retained her wonderful sense of humor. She loved a good joke and would laugh out loud with the pure joy of being alive, even through her tears.

During her years living alone, after all of us had married and left home, she made a rich life for herself. She enrolled at Thomas Nelson Community College, she took up oil painting, she resumed ball room dancing, which she loved, took lessons and danced successfully in many competitions. The cha cha was her favorite, but she also danced a mean foxtrot.

In 1983 my daughter, Jeanie's grand daughter, Kendra Jean, was born. Jeanie loved her to death. Jeanie's house filled up over the years with photos of Kendra from birth to college graduation and beyond. She especially loved Kendra's gymnastics photos. I don't think Jeanie threw away one of the cards or letters Kendra wrote her over the years.

To the end, Jeanie loved to travel, especially enjoying anyplace where there was ocean. Several times she rented a beach house for the family on the Outer Banks, and we spent a week together on the sand and in the sun. She, Loretta, Susan,Kendra and I went to the Bahamas two or three times (most recently for her eightieth birthday), and she and Tommy and his wife Sonny, Loretta and Susan went to Hawaii twice. She loved her many visits to Tommy and Sonny in California. Jeanie enjoyed putting a quarter or two in a slot machine and her eyes would light up if Tommy said “Reno?”.

When at home, Jeanie loved a good game of cards (Samba is the favorite family game) and a good game of Scrabble. The rivalry was fierce: when I called I got word by word descriptions of games and a running tab of who had won. On one visit family history was made when “little” Kendra beat both of her aunts and her grandma at Scrabble.

A few years ago, we bought Jeanie her first computer. We thought it might just collect dust, but we couldn't have been more wrong. She took to it like a duck to water, again with that “can-do” attitude: if she couldn't already do something, she would figure it out or call Loretta, call Kevin, get Tommy to walk her through it long distance. She played advanced computer Scrabble, insisted the computer used illegal words, and took delight in still beating it. She also loved ordering gifts for family and friends on-line: the Godiva chocolates and the roses would arrive regularly. She never forgot a birthday or an anniversary. For my sixtieth birthday, a week before she died, she sent me a card with a goofy dog on the front, that said, “You're turning 60? Wow!! In dog years, that's, like...(open the card) Oops! Never mind...” She signed it “The Phantom.”

Jeanie loved the simple pleasures in life: her family, her friends, her diet coke, her soaps and game shows. She really loved “Dancing with the Stars.” She had a generous heart. She did not have an easy life and she felt its sorrows deeply, but throughout she found life a joyous blessing. It was a blessing for us to have had such a wonderful woman in our lives. She lives on in our hearts.