Sarah Jane Rose

Sarah Jane Groseclose was born on February 8. 1939 in Madison, WI, where her mother Mary Elizabeth Bradbury (Meb) Groseclose had gone to stay with Sarah Jane’s maternal grandparents while Sarah Jane’s father, USN Captain Samuel K. Groseclose, was deployed. When she was a toddler, the family made Eastport in Annapolis their permanent home, where they lived in an old house on the water on Spa Creek at Presidents’ Point.

As a child, Sarah Jane became a legend of sorts. Every day she rowed across Spa Creek to attend the Holladay School, aka “Miss Woodward’s”, a very small private elementary school located in a big old house on Southgate Ave. First, when she was little, her father would row her; but when she was older, she would row herself along with her younger sister, Mary Ann, a fellow student. Sarah Jane maintained a life-long love of rowing. As an adult, she went on to help found the Annapolis Rowing Club.

She graduated from Annapolis High School in 1956 and enrolled in Mary Washington College (then the women’s college of UVA). She graduated in 1960 with a BA in History.

While in college, she met the love of her life and future husband, Ken Rose, at a party on a boat on the Severn River. About their meeting, Sarah Jane would often say she had to walk past him many times to get his attention, because Ken was “too busy reading the newspaper.” Eventually she did catch his eye, and they were married on June 25, 1960, at St. Anne’s in Annapolis.

Sarah Jane and Ken started their life together in Annapolis, and Ken worked as an engineer at NSA. They had two daughters while living in Admiral Heights. In 1966, they embarked on a grand adventure and moved to the burgeoning Silicon Valley where Ken became a pioneer in the semiconductor industry.

The couple settled in Saratoga, CA, where Sarah Jane became active in the community. She dove into local politics and was soon appointed Saratoga Parks Commissioner. During those early boom years in Northern CA, housing development was spreading like wildfire. Sarah Jane personally was responsible for preserving an extensive network of city parks that still exist today and help make Saratoga a very beautiful place to live.

Also in California, she headed up the Sunday School at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Los Gatos, and she was an active member of The Junior League of San Jose.

In 1975, during a bust time in Silicon Valley, the family moved back home to Annapolis and settled in Wardour. Ken resumed his career at NSA. Yet while Sarah Jane was a proud Annapolis native and loved her hometown, she still missed the west coast and its attractions. Sometimes she would complain about the “tedium of the East” as she longed for CA.

In Annapolis, Sarah Jane worked for Historic Annapolis, and then she became a part-time archivist at the Maryland Hall of Records (now the Maryland State Archives) on the St. John’s campus. A highlight of her time there was when she helped Alex Haley research his family’s genealogy for his famous book “Roots”.

For her whole life, Sarah Jane, a voracious reader and scholar, immersed herself in history and the study of the past. While doing research for a project chronicling the lives of every MD state legislator going back to American Revolution, she would sometimes date her checks to the grocery store with the wrong century. She had an immense vocabulary and would often use historic words like “hoosegow” and “chippy” that are rarely used today.

In her later years, Sarah Jane spent time in Sandestin, FL, and she and Ken enjoyed international travel to countries like Spain and India. She studied Spanish later in her life (she had lived in the French house during college), and she was one of the founders of St. Anne’s mission projects in Guatemala. She and Ken traveled to Guatemala many times to help and empower the country’s Mayan community.

In her spare time, Sarah Jane enjoyed gardening and was active in the Wardour Garden Club. She was interested in design and especially antiques. She loved the arts, including opera and ballet, and for a time she served on the board of The Ballet Theatre of Maryland. Wherever she went, Sarah Jane was always impeccably dressed, no matter the occasion. She liked to say, “It’s ok to be pretty and smart!”

In 2016, Sarah Jane and Ken moved to Bay Woods of Annapolis, where she enjoyed the bay views and the sense of community.

Above all, Sarah Jane was a devoted wife, mother, daughter, sister and grandmother. She will be sorely missed by her family and friends. She is predeceased by her mother and father; and by her sister, Mary Ann McCammon. She is survived by her husband of 64 years, Kenneth H. Rose of Annapolis; by her daughter Susan Rose Hupper (Craig) of Brooklyn, NY; by her daughter Katherine Rose Ruth (Michael) of Imperial Beach, CA; and by her two granddaughters and two grandsons.

A funeral will be held on Thursday, August 1 at 11 am at St. Anne’s Church on Church Circle in Annapolis, with burial to follow at St. Anne’s Cemetery. All are welcome.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Sarah Jane’s memory to St. Anne’s Church for the Partners in Mission in Guatemala.