Jean Moffat Bearak

Read, my Sunday, June 30 blog, "In loving memory of a beloved mom and grandma, sister and friend to so many"
https://www.gothamnetworking.com/blogs/entry/In-loving-memory-of-a-beloved-mom-and-grandma-sister-and-friend-to-so-many

My sister Jeanie 6/21/2024

My sister Jeanie, later, Jean. I read something on Facebook a while back that described our childhood. "People with siblings have better survival skills because they've had experience in physical combat, psychological warfare, and sensing suspicious activity"
My first memory of Jean was her chasing me on the “bridge” over our living room with a hammer, Marj trailing. The girl’s bedroom was on one side of the house and mine on the other with an open “bridge” connecting. I was probably 7 or 8, making my younger sister about 3. That “bridge was a wonderful thing; we could jump off onto the living room couch. We would take turns running away from home. We would pack something to take, maybe food, dolls, or books. We would hide under the bridge that Richie mentioned and go home before dark. We didn’t realize Mom could see under the bridge from our house. We were taking a family trip with the three of us in the back seat squabbling. Our father told us to cut it out or we would go back home. About the time we reached Middle Island, he’d had enough and pulled into the Robert Hall store there and bought our mother a new winter coat. Then back home.
Jean was the most like our mother of the three of us. Mom could be stern but never nasty. I want to think that we all are like that but Jean most of all. She lived in the “city” after getting married, at least city to us East Enders. Aunt Edith (Mom’s sister) lived close by in Franklin Square and Jean was our contact point with her and our cousins. Also being a “city girl”, she took the lead in getting the kids (Billy & Robbie) to the Bronx Zoo.
Jean had made her mind up that she would not die until after our mother’s birthday (March 13). As Marj explained, Jean felt she and our mom were sort of twins. They both married in their early 20s, they both had their first child (a son) at age 25, they were both widowed in their mid-50s (as was Aunt Edith) and she believed they would both die at age 78. And it was so.
I wrote this after Robbie told me today that it was ok if it wasn’t a polished “article” just my thoughts. I miss my baby sister. Today I sent an email to Marj that it was ok to go swimming now. June 21st is my father’s birthday and as children we were told we had to wait till then to go in the water, not mentioning that it was the summer solstice. Her answer says it all:

You're right. I forgot what day it is. I guess I miss Jean reminding me!

A month has passed now and I ofcourse still miss my sister very much. Growing up we shared a room in what was then a very small cottage. Around 1950 my parents added on to the house and my mother only had two requests...closets and seperate rooms for Jean and I. She was so tired of our bickering over who was on who's side of the room! We grew out of that stage and after leaving home Jean, Al and I became much closer and really enjoyed each others company. My parents taught us that anyone coming into our home was automatically treated like family, with love and respect. A policy that never failed Jean. I think she was the most like our mother in spirit so I miss her doubly. now

Jean

Jean was an awesome observer of everything and everyone around her. What struck me most was her ability to take it all in without judgement. Ever kind and accepting, soft and gentle.

I also had the benefit of receiving her sassy cartoon cards with comic cutouts and gifts that reminded you of just how old you were. I do believe that I was probably last to receive one of those when celebrating one last family get together with her on the Sunday before she passed.

May she be at peace.

Jean was a priviledge to know. I do not have many stories from her years before she came into my life, though i know that there were long car rides to the Outer Banks during some of thecsummers of her youth tor the family summer vacations. Jean walked to the same school from kindergarden through her highschool graduation being one of 64 students of the class of 64. She walked along Oaklawn Avenue, across the Jockey Creek bridge past a potato farm and the school playing fields. Jockey Creek bordered the rear yard of the home Jean was raised in, though, i never sensed that the creek was a significant influence, i did not recall stories of Jean playing there though that was likely her first beach. Perhaps she was fascinated by the tiny fish as i was when i eas first introduced to the tiny beach near the house, though in my years going with her to her family home, i never recall her going with us to the creek or whether she wandered its shore line as i would come to do or fish there or boat on it. I do recall an unfortunate story of a school mate jumping off the bridge and not realizing that the water depth was at low tide and living in a wheel chair as a result and that her youth included a housefull of Wheeler cousins who loved in the northern section of town on a potato farm iarm of her aunt who drove not so straight into her 90s amd visiting the house with Jean fot family gatherings where i was always welcomed.

Jean grew up in a household where you had to eat vegetables--at least one for every year of your age at the time. That was her fathers rule and it became a torturous dinner and evening for me one year. I do not know how Jean got through that ordeal and how know sense of Jean being a vegetable lover as an adult. There were also games at the kitchen table that i do not know when they became a family thing but they were associated with low stake gambling, it was there that i was introduced to the card game 7s. You need a 7 to start a suit and build higher or lower to make a play. Inability to place a card cost you a penny and if you had cards left after there would be a winner, you oeed another penny for each one. I also rember being introduced to Parchese, where each piece not making it to the home base cost you a fime. Another story of her youth was her revealing the she initially did not know the trees had leaves-- until her parents decided that Jean needed glasses. Though given how many trees surrounded her family home, i never though to ask what she recalled when she walked through the blobs of leaves every fall that piled up on the ground, Jean's other grandparent's had a farm in Riverhead, still there aling the North Road off Doctor's Path-- though i have no stories off her play on the property and am not aware of how old her grandparenys were when they got the the summer house a short walk from the rocky beaches of the Long Island Sound and whether Jean would swim there or talk the beach walks as i would come to love along its bluff extending past the Northville Oil pipeline in one direction and to Pier Beach the other way. and i do not know if Jean every experienced the oil route ride with her dad, Grandpa Bill, as i had in his overnight shift that started with donuts at the depot. There were the christmas day meal tradition at the Riverhead farm and Christmas Eve at home capped off by going to her cousins and then there was the Labor Day clam back-- which i do not associate with Jean eating the backed claims and where kids could only join the food line after the adults. Jean's lineage went back to the early settlers that left England for religious freedom and the ventoured out from New England and landed in Founder's Bay and started the Southold community. Her father's side migrated from Scotland during the 1800s. Jean got into the banking profession when she met my father and maintain that as her career that ended up overseeing mortgages. This relationship with my father flourished and brought Jean to me.

Even before I met Jean, when I was dating her son (now my husband) Robert, she sent me a birthday card with a little sassy cartoon: her signature move. Another time, we had left behind from a previous visit some absurd larger-than-life Islander fan cut-outs. She set them up in Robert’s room to greet us when we arrived. Though I knew her for too short a time, I’m grateful that I had a chance to get to know her boundless generosity, thoughtfulness, pragmatism and good will all mixed together with marvelous humor. Condolences to her beloved family.