Jean Henning

Jean Freeland Henning was born May 22, 1919, in Freeland, Michigan, a small town named after her great-grandparents Mammy and Pappy Freeland. She lived a wonderful life at an amazing time in history. In spite of her timid personality, Mom accomplished many things in her 101 years on this planet.

When Mom was born World War I had just ended and was still the main influence on the world. One of her childhood memories was her embarrassment from sitting too high in her grandfather’s Model T, while everyone else was in the much more modern and lower riding Model A.

Mom started her teaching career in a one-room country schoolhouse in rural Michigan. She earned her master’s degree from Columbia University in New York City. Mom taught in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, when it was developing “heavy water” for use in the first atomic weapons of World War II.

She returned to Freeland and married Otto Henning and raised her sons in the town of her youth. Mom lovingly taught “special education” to the tremendous benefit of many children, before there was such a thing as special education. The only thing she disliked about teaching was the trepidation she always suffered when anticipating parent-teacher conferences. Mom lived through the development of air travel, skyscrapers, World War II, television, putting men in space and then on the moon, satellites, computers, and so much more. Can a more challenging time to live even be imagined?

Mom was born in the middle of the great flu pandemic which killed at least 50,000,000 people worldwide. She died 101 years later on Sunday, July 12, 2020, (from unrelated causes) during the COVID-19 pandemic, isolated for the last three months of her life from her loved ones.

Jean is survived by her two sons, Mark and Lee Henning; her five grandchildren, Rachel Henning, Becky Rutz, Chrissie Mathurin, Debbie Dugdale and Josh Henning; and her six great-grandchildren, Scarlet and Violet Rowe, Jubilee, Noah and Caleb Rutz, and Leilani Mathurin.

Mom is now in heaven with her Lord and her generation of family. She will be greatly missed by those left behind, but in the sense of eternity — we are all with you Mom.