Jean E. Dean, a woman filled with wanderlust who eventually settled at the Jersey Shore in Ship Bottom in the mid-1960s, will celebrate one of her greatest milestones this Christmas. The local resident, who spent much of her adult life traveling the country as a Trans World Airlines flight attendant, where she befriended owner Howard Hughes, before eventually marrying Alfred “Chubby” Dean, a Major League Baseball pitcher and first baseman who played for the Philadelphia Athletics (now the Oakland Athletics) and the Cleveland Indians in the 1930s and ’40s, will celebrate her 100th birthday on Dec. 25.
To celebrate Dean’s century of life, and many more years to come, she plans to enjoy a lobster dinner with her grandson, Greg Root, and his girlfriend, Joy Buhler, at The Octopus’s Garden in Mayetta on Christmas Eve.
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| Photo by Jack Reynolds Jean Dean recounts memories of her life over the past 100 years. |
Though she now lives a quiet life with her two cats, Ruby and Meow, just three houses from the ocean on Long Beach Island in a duplex below her grandson, the New Jersey native who grew up in Riverside said she has had a “wonderful life” exploring land, sky and sea.
Dean had written to Eastern Airlines in her early years and was denied a position because “they only hired men.” But her nursing skills, which she acquired after high school while working at St. Agnes Hospital in Philadelphia, later helped her obtain a position with TWA, originally formed as Transcontinental and Western Air.
Standing at 5-feet-5, Dean said she was told during her interview, which she kept quiet from her parents, that she was too tall. She was later chosen out of 100 applicants.
“I made it out of 20 girls,” she remembered. “I was in the biggest planes all the time. I had a good reputation.”
She left the Garden State to move to Kansas City, where TWA was once headquartered. She was on the initial flight of the first TWA Stratoliner, the first commercial plane with a pressurized cabin, which was delivered in 1940.
Dean escaped death from a TWA crash that killed 22 people, including Carole Lombard and her mother and 15 army servicemen, in January 1942. Dean was supposed to be on the flight, but switched shifts with a fellow flight attendant.
“I was so upset about it that I was going to quit flying,” she said.
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| Photo by Jack Reynolds The LBI resident worked as a flight attendant for the Trans World Airlines for many years. |
Dean did not quit, however. She was a good friend of Hughes, who often asked for her personal assistance when flying. The first time they met, she said, she had to help him out of his bed, which had “fallen apart and sunken.” Although Dean thought she would be fired, Hughes simply told her she had “really pinched his ass,” she said, laughing at the memory.
“He came up to the door, and I’ll never forget, he had a New York Times paper, and he was a handsome man then,” she remembered. “He had on a dark, cashmere coat. I’ll never forget it.”
While on a layover in Chicago one day (much to her disappointment because she had a date somewhere else), Dean said she also got a chance to meet Chubby, her husband of 30 years, who died of a heart attack in 1970.
“Chubby was terrific,” she said. “He was the smartest person, and he was great at beating the Yankees. He shut them out two times on opening day. I had a wonderful life with him because everything was sports. You mention it, and I went to it – Kentucky Derbies and everything, all the big things he would do.”
They both loved to travel, and she went by boat to join him in Germany, where Chubby was stationed in the military during World War II. During their stay, Dean often took trips all over Europe. In 1950, she went to Rome with 300 other people to meet Pope Pius XII, who blessed her at the Vatican, which she believes helped her get pregnant after doctors had told her she would never be able to have children. She had her only daughter, Donna Root, shortly after returning to the United States.
“Miracles do happen,” said Dean. “What’s to be will be.”
During her travels, she met many famous people, including actors James Cagney and Errol Flynn, comedian George Burns and New York Yankees center fielder Joe DiMaggio, as well as singer and jazz pianist Nat King Cole.
Dean has traveled to every state except North and South Dakota and Alaska, her grandson said. She also worked many years for MacMillan Publishing Co.
“I had a wonderful life, I really did,” she said. “I’m open for everything.”
Although Dean dated and even received marriage proposals after Chubby passed away, she vowed never to marry again.
“She’s gone to Hawaii. She went to see the Eagles play in the Super Bowl in 1981. She’s done everything she ever wanted to do,” her grandson said. “She’s dated musicians, she’s dated athletes. She’s done it all. She’s been married. She’s gone on balloon rides. She’s done everything you can think of: nursing, modeling, dancing, all that, everything. Everything you can think of, she’s done.”
— Kelley Anne Essinger
This article was published in The SandPaper.
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