Jean is the 80-year-old owner of Lagoon Cove.  Or as noted below, the almost former owner now that Jim Ryan has bought the property and will run it as of approximately September of this year.  She and her late husband, Bill, acquired this property back in 1992 and have built it and the great reputation it enjoys today.

Ann and I had the very good fortune of being able to chat with her yesterday and learn a little bit about her life.  Jean insists that Bill was the entertaining one but we were mesmerized.

I can’t do justice to the whole story since I wasn’t taking notes, but we were enthralled.  So here’s a sketch of what we learned, with the caveat that it’s our interpretation, not a fact-checked bio.

Jean was born in Romania and emigrated to the US in 1951.  At the time – post WWII with the beginnings of the Cold War well under way, Jean’s father correctly realized that unless they wanted to endure under communist, or as Jean noted what they called at the time Bolshevik, rule they had better emigrate.  As Jean tells it, they left Romania  in 1946 for Switzerland from which they could seek the required sponsor who would give them the ability to seek citizenship in the US.  It took four years in Switzerland before they found a sponsor.

At the time of their voyage to the US, Jean was 16 years old and the only member of her family of eleven who spoke English.  So at 16, she became the family translator, getting them processed through Ellis Island, into New York, and on a train to Cincinnati where their sponsor lived.  We clearly understood Jean’s family’s good fortune when we heard her tell that her sponsors were from the Taft and Chase families.  Taft and Chase as in relatives of the former president and of the financial empire.

But the sponsors, while generous people to be helping immigrants who were looking for a better life, obviously weren’t providing long-term support.  For that of course her father needed a job and Jean told of going with him to job interviews where she translated between her father (who was a woodworker and builder) and the prospective employers.  In one such interview Jean told of the prospective employer’s objections. “Why should I hire you?  You use metric measurements and tools, and you don’t speak English so we can’t tell you what is to be done”.  His response, “You have blueprints don’t you?  I can read blueprints”.  After more objections her father finally said, “It is Friday.  You are looking for someone on Monday.  I will come in Monday with new tools and you give me the blueprints of what to build.  If at the end of the week you are not satisfied with my work, you do not have to pay me and all you will be out is for the materials I use”.  He not only got the job but he built a successful career there.

We heard so much other fascinating detail of a family who came here with nothing and built successful lives through hard work and determination, that we just had to get the thread of the story down so we can share at least a very small portion of a wonderful person’s fascinating story.  As Jean self-deprecatingly told it; “But, you know, everyone has a story”.