Up right until the day she died, Jean Dain Waters cherished to engage in backgammon.
She and her spouse played it all their married life, in accordance to loved ones customers, and the pair often experienced close friends in excess of to engage in as perfectly. In hospice, she would set up the board on her mattress to perform versus daughter Dain Waters.
Nevertheless her mother’s shorter-expression memory hadn’t been what it employed to be, Waters stated her backgammon skills remained sharp.
“It was incredible. It factors out to the efficacy, I consider, of the previous-fashioned rote-and-memory understanding,” she explained.
Jean Dain Waters had no problems remembering Shakespeare, either. The words and phrases to her beloved Cole Porter and Frank Sinatra tunes arrived just as effortless, and figured amid several other tough-to-overlook matters about her lifestyle.
Waters, of Rochester, Minn., died Friday, June 11, 2021, at the age of 100.
Jean Dain Waters
Born in St. Paul, Waters obtained a personal faculty training, very first at the Northrop Collegiate College in Minneapolis — component of the Blake University — and later on at Rosemary Corridor in Connecticut and Bennet Junior Faculty in Millbrook, N.Y. In the course of Planet War II, she labored for the Pink Cross in Washington, D.C., and returned to Minnesota just after marrying fellow Blake College graduate George Franklin Waters, also of Minneapolis, in 1946.
The couple moved to Rochester, the place they raised three daughters.
Waters turned known for her eccentricities and outgoing nature. She as soon as noticed Ernest Hemingway and his spouse Mary going for walks down the street and tried to invite them about for a consume, in accordance to loved ones lore, but the couple declined. (Hemingway was in the midst of therapy for despair at the Mayo Clinic.)
On a excursion to Boston, Waters was denied entry to the Ritz-Carlton restaurant for putting on a pantsuit, which went from the dress code. She returned in a nightgown and was seated.
“She was extremely remarkable,” daughter Annie Waters said.
Far more Well worth Realizing:
In addition to singing, and playing guitar and piano, Waters liked to dance. She was a founding member of the Seraphim III liturgical dance team at Calvary Episcopal Church, wherever she also assisted immediate the kid’s choir. From 1975 on she taught a dance-physical fitness course out of the historic Plummer Home in Rochester.
Called “Fitnastics,” Waters’ courses combined elements of dance, yoga and Pilates.
“It capitalizes on lyrical, rhythmic movement instead than fast percussive movement but nevertheless fulfills present-day aerobic suggestions,’’ she instructed the Rochester Submit Bulletin in a 2009 tale.
Waters’ aptitude for the extraordinary was also evidenced by her a lot of performances in Rochester Civic Theatre productions like “Kiss Me Kate,” “Lion in Winter season” and “Mame.” She also sat on the boards of the Minnesota Mental Health and fitness Affiliation and the Nationwide Hypertension Association, in accordance to her obituary.
Waters died of what loved ones mentioned had been all-natural triggers after foremost a “gorgeous existence.”
Waters is survived by her daughters and grandchildren. She was preceded in demise by her partner in 2015 following approximately 70 many years of relationship.