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Memorial Keepers(6)
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Jean Grossholtz
February 9th, 2021
February 9th, 2021
UPDATE: If you missed Jean's memorial and would like to watch a video recording of Jean's memorial celebration, please email Nancy at nrichardemail99@gmail.com
"Badass", “Legendary”, “Larger than Life”, “Brilliant”, “Life changing”, a “Blessing”, “Inspiring”, “Extraordinary”...these are words that Mount Holyoke College alumnae use today to describe Professor Emeritus Jean Grossholtz, who taught at Mount Holyoke College over a span of 4 decades. She founded the Women's Studies department and managed to touch, stir, and ignite the lives of countless women in deep and profound ways. As a South East Asian specialist, Jean thought and taught through a global perspective, decolonizing education by asking: “How do you know what you know?”. Jean taught us to question everything, to ask ourselves: "who benefits?", and said "Because we assume scarcity, we cannot imagine equality".
She was a founding member of Diverse Women for Diversity, an international group of environmental activists, created on the principles of biodiversity and eco-feminism. Jean, the activist, protested in rallies and marches all over the world, for various causes from women's rights to environmental justice, from labor rights to food security, and propelled her students to do the same. Jean created havoc wherever she went in her fight for justice. Her commitment to non-violent civil disobedience led to a record number of arrests all over the globe.
Jean achieved distinguished academic recognition while staying true to her working class roots. She enlisted in the army where she was awarded a medal for good conduct, only to later protest outside army recruitment centers and fervently participate in anti-war rallies. Jean, the mentor, spoke about dismantling the social construct of "body image", and then at age 65 went on to win the silver medal in body building at the Gay Games. Jean ate salt with popcorn (not the other way around) and did what her rice krispies told her to do, which was to snap, crackle, and pop. Jean taught us that we could solve life's problems through quiet contemplation and introspection while solving jigsaw puzzles. Jean loved to read, to walk her dogs, and was the star pitcher on her softball team “Hot Flashes”.
As an out and proud lesbian, Jean opened up her home to countless lesbians who desperately sought chosen families. Jean’s partner of 35 years Eileen Elliott predeceased her and she is survived by her brother Dean, his wife Lucy, other members of her biological family, Eileen’s family, and by many devoted members of her chosen family. Jean's passion and fire for social justice was contagious and on February 9th 2021, she left behind generations of fueled activists who are following her unfinished dream of smashing the patriarchy, dismantling racism, defeating capitalism, fighting for equality, and caring for the environment. Jean will be remembered for her sense of humor, her generous, giving, and helping spirit that stayed intact till the very end.
Contributions in Jean's name can be made to:
ARISE for Social Justice in Springfield, MA - Jean participated in advocacy and action with ARISE. She had a close alliance with her friend Michaelann Bewsee and believed in the mission of bringing people together to fight for their rights, to housing, criminal justice, environmental justice, and public health.
https://www.arisespringfield.org/donate
or
All Out Adventures - As a female veteran, over 65, Jean was eligible for several of their fabulous programs. Jean enjoyed participating and telling people about biking, kayaking, snowshoeing, skating, hiking, sledding. This was all while she was in her late 80s.
https://alloutadventures.z2systems.com/np/clients/alloutadventures/donation.jsp?campaign=8
or
Mount Holyoke College - Jean was a great supporter of the Frances Perkins Scholars, and gifts made to this effort would directly benefit students. To make a gift by check, include a note designating your gift "in memory of Jean Grossholtz, for MHF Frances Perkins Scholarship Aid", and mail to:Office of DevelopmentMount Holyoke CollegePO Box 889South Hadley, MA 01075
To make a gift online, go to Choose "Scholarship Support for FP Students" from the drop down menu in the gift designation area.Enter Jean's name in the "In Memory Of" section.
Events
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Tributes
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Flower
For the past few days I have been thinking of you .
Susan Woods
Susan Woods' tribute given at Jean Grossholtz Zoom memorial, March 7, 2021 My name is Susan Woods. I knew Jean as a friend. 10 Jewett Lane was my home throughout most of the 1970’s. Going back there always felt like family - safe and welcomed. I graduated from Mount Holyoke College but never had Jean as a teacher. I never experienced her eye-opening, life changing impact in the classroom. However, I have come to appreciate what that experience must have been like. Toward the end of her life, I worked with Jean on her unfinished manuscript - .Rethinking the World I realize now she was pulling together the political philosophy she developed through her years of teaching. What began as a gesture of friendship, I now consider an honor. When we started, her eyesight was severely deteriorated; she could barely see to read. She was in the mid-stages of dementia. But she loved talking about her ideas and continued to challenge her own thinking with the unanswered questions in her mind – there was something about the role of the state. “We think about it like a box,” she’d say drawing a square in the air with her finger, then waving that finger around as if searching for the answer she hadn’t quite worked out. She’d push herself by asking: How do we know what we know? And I realized this was her method. Then we’d read some more and come across an absolutely brilliantly succinct and powerful sentence - just lying there on the page. She wrote: Because we assume scarcity; we cannot imagine equality. When we‘d come to something she liked, she’d underline it and say Yes! Yes! Jean had concluded that the constructs of Western thought and philosophy distort human community and prevent achievement of justice and just governance. This manuscript is her rejection of Western thought, which she labeled ‘whiteness’ ― a view of the world based on the belief in a hierarchical male-gendered god in the sky, the protection of private property ownership above all else, and science viewed as control over nature. She was synthesizing what she had learned through her working-class upbringing, her wide-ranging scholarship, her lesbian identity, her activism, her observations of life, community and nature, here and around the globe. She concluded that we could never create revolution, thinking the way we were taught - through the lens of ‘whiteness’. The best could be accomplished is reform. She was creating a political theory – philosophy - to rethink the world. We made it mid-way through the third chapter. We worked together until her joy gave way to anxiety. That her final manuscript remains a work-in-progress is a loss and a challenge for us to continue. Jean, may your kindness and gaiety, your brilliance and courage, your descriptiveness and life-pursuit of justice be the inspiration you leave us all.. Much love always.
Nancy Richard
Nancy Richard’s tribute given at Jean Grossholtz Zoom memorial, March 7, 2021 Unlike many of you I didn’t have a Mt. Holyoke or even an activist connection to Jean. Jean and I share the same birthday—April 17, and because of that we’ve been fast friends for forty years. For most of those years, we took a birthday trip to someplace warm. We looked for birds and animals and of course great food and drink. I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of Jean than in the last few years, when the essential Jean shone through her decrepitude (a word she would use). She faced her greatest fear when she started forgetting her words. At first it was frustrating for her to search for the right word, then she just substituted other words, and then— so she could talk non-stop and seamlessly— she just made up words and added them where they needed to be. You either kept up or you didn’t. Losing her sight was the next big challenge. Reading was so important to Jean, it was a sad day when we cancelled the NYTimes, and she had little patience for sitting still to listen to an audiobook. She still had her bodybuilder legs, incredible hearing, sense of humor, a growing sense of adventure, and her usual kindness and generosity. By the time she moved to Orchard Valley, she was ready to take care of everyone there and enjoy herself doing it. She told overworked and underpaid staff daily how much she loved them and how beautiful they were. She always insisted on helping them do just about everything. She wanted to make everyone’s life a little easier. She was repaid with laughter, hugs and admiration. Jean also never lost her sense of justice and her need to change the world. She never stopped working on a plan for how the work could continue and each of us play a part. Jean could be hard on herself. She never thought she worked hard enough— never accomplished enough. I tried to remind her of all the people whose lives she touched. And here you are just : some of you. There are lots more. One of the last tributes I read last night was from a student. She said, Thank you professor Grossholtz. The world is changed because of you. So there, my friend, it must be true. Nancy Richard’s tribute given at Jean Grossholtz Zoom memorial, March 7, 2021
Mary Mulligan
When the most recent MHC Alumnae Quarterly arrived and I saw Jean on the cover, that smile, that tee shirt, those glasses- time collapsed and it was the late 1970s in South Hadley and I was an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke. I never had a class with Jean or really even knew her but I certainly knew who she was; she had iconic status even then. Her picture evoked for me the radical feminism of that period; its complexities and contradictions, and as important, its dynamism. All of which and more, she embodied and taught. Teaching is always a political act and it was only one of her thousands upon thousands of political acts. Thank you for each one of them Jean. There is much more left to do and something tells me you are still at it!
Marsha Simon
Jean Grossholtz was my advisor/mentor at Mount Holyoke College. I went to graduate school at MIT partially at her urging because she had earned her Ph.D. there and had loved the program. Of course, she was appointed to be an evaluator of the program when I was a first year Ph.D. candidate and burst out of the meeting cursing the sexist male leadership of the department — she was right of course.
Carollee Bengelsdorf
And ah! Jewitt Lane. I came for a day with my pooch Luc oh so many years ago and stayed for about a year or so, and on and off for a decade or so.. The pooch stayed even longer..
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