Jean Kessinger Belden

December 16, 1912 – December 1, 2011

From her son……………………….

My mother died peacefully at her home in Washington, DC, just 15 days shy of her 99th birthday.

She was preceded in death by her beloved husband of 54 years, Allen Belden, and is survived by their two children, Nancy Belden Wood and her husband Owen of Rockville, MD, and Allen Belden Jr. of Richmond, VA. She is also survived by three grandchildren and six great grandchildren. She was deeply loved and will be greatly missed by her family and friends.

Jean was born and grew up in Abilene, KS, the boyhood home of Dwight Eisenhower and the terminus of the Chisholm Trail from 1867-1871. She considered her childhood to be an idyllic time, and late in life she chronicled those years in a memoir: Growing up in Abilene: Memories of a Kansas Childhood.

She attended Stephens College in Columbia, MO, and married my father in 1934. They resided in Norman, OK, for nine years, where my father taught geography at the University of Oklahoma and where daughter Nancy was born. In 1942, they moved to Washington, DC, where my father worked for the US Department of the Interior and where I was born in 1952. In 1952, they moved into a new house which they helped design, and where my mother resided for almost 60 years.

My mother loved music. As a child and young woman in Abilene she studied piano and took part in local musical and theatrical productions. When I was a child in Washington, DC, she played only occasionally on a decrepit upright piano that lived in the basement. Sometime in the 1970s, however, and after extensive research, she purchased the new Sohmer upright that was her pride and joy. Going through her sheet music this morning, I found Bach, Beethoven sonatas, Chopin preludes and the rags of Scott Joplin, which she claimed were particularly difficult to play because of their syncopated rhythms.

The operettas and popular music of the 1900-1950 period were her true love, however, and among her favorite composers were Rudolf Friml, Victor Herbert, and Cole Porter. She could play most any melody by ear and improvise the accompaniment to it. She composed a couple of songs herself, one of which, The Trail is Ending had, I thought, a sad melody. I took this song to be a foreshadowing of her own death, but she didn’t see it that way. In the last years of her life, when she was bedridden, deaf, and blind, she still loved to sing. He favorite during those years was Cole Porter’s Begin the Beguine.

My mother also loved to travel, an interest that may have been nurtured by the excitement of annual vacation trips as a child from Abilene to Colorado over very poor roads. She visited Nancy and her family when they lived in Ethiopia and Egypt and spent a month in Mexico City when I was a student there. She traveled widely with my father in Europe and, after his death, visited granddaughter Jeanie and her husband Mark in Belgium. When she was in her 70s, she took two trips by herself to the West Coast, visiting British Columbia, San Francisco, the Grand Canyon, and many other places. Countless trips were made to visit family in Texas, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Maine, and Florida. She was up for an adventure, and reservations weren’t necessary.

More than travel or music, however, my mother’s life was about relationships. Family always came first, but she had many lifelong friends. With the exception of her last years, I doubt that she ever received a letter that she didn’t answer. She was a wonderful listener, and people tended to feel comfortable talking over their problems with her. She was seldom judgmental and never preachy. It was distressing to her when people didn’t get along, but, if she worked at reconciliation, it was in quiet ways. She was a great moral force in my life, but she mostly exercised it by example rather than through words. When she did have to tell me what was what, she did it in a way that seldom made me mad. You never wanted to let her down.

I am blessed to carry her with me wherever I go.

PS During the last years of her life, my mother was cared for by several wonderful ladies from Trinidad and Jamaica. Nancy and I are grateful to them all and particularly to Cynthia and Janice who were with her for several years and at the end.

Burial will be in Columbia, Missouri, in the spring of 2012.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to All Saint’s Episcopal Church, 3 Chevy Chase Circle, Chevy Chase, MD 20815

Arrangements under the direction of Joseph Gawler's Sons Inc., Washington, DC.