Mumsie of Whittier and Park Avenue

Does the lady in the photo look like New York City high society? A Mrs. Astor, a Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Roosevelt? No? More like, say, hardscrabble Whittier, Calif. low society who worked her way through college, then taught first grade in California’s San Berdoo Mountains (“This old man, he played one, he played knick knack on my thumb…”) before magically landing in the Big Apple? Had dementia not ravaged, then stolen, Jackie (Mumsie) two months ago, she would have celebrated 69 years of blissful matrimony on August 10. But wait — blissful might be a stretch; her best pal for 70 years gave Mumsie inadequate credit in her recent Reader obituary. While the tribute acknowledged her deep love of nature, friends, family, animals, insects, tennis, volunteerism, PBS, horses, little kids, dogs and life’s underdogs, it failed to cite a decades-long partnership with him among New York’s top-tier corporate players. Not that he was one. He wasn’t; but he worked for some who were, like Charles L. “Charlie” Brown, CEO of the original AT&T.

In those heady days (1980s), AT&T stood for American Telephone and Telegraph (no relation to the current one, which stands for AT&T), and when led by Brown, had nearly a million employees, three million shareowners and was parent company of the Bell Telephone System — “The Biggest Company On Earth” according to Sonny Kleinfeld of The New York Times.

It was once said that behind every good man there’s a good woman (today, fortunately, it’s often the reverse). Such was the case with self-made collegian and teacher Mumsie (who also taught school in Indiana and New Jersey) aka Jacquelynn from the unimpressive side of the Whittier, Calif. tracks. Several happy, adventuresome decades later, CEO Charlie Brown made certain that Mumsie was always invited to his corporate high society black-tie galas in NYC. 

During the Henney’s 1972-76 test drive with the international powerhouse Deere & Co. in Moline, Ill., president Elwood “Woody” Curtis felt similarly. He and wife Helen considered Jackie almost essential at executive dining room banquets for bigshot political, editorial and industrial guests. Talking to her husband about Jackie, Helen always referred to her as “your daughter.”

Mumsie was modest, not given to social airs or to those who were. She didn’t play bridge, gossip or shop for shoes — or for much else. She arrived in New York on a Trans World Airlines flight in July, 1957 with $20. Zipping along the Long Island Expressway in the pint-sized Brit roadster her husband had driven from California, he inquired about the $400 she had promised to bring. Mumsie said she gave it to her dad. At that, her driver considered pulling a U-turn on the freeway and sending her back to LAX. But love prevailed.

The fact that his cramped, bohemian Greenwich Village pad had no kitchen didn’t bother Mumsie; cooking was as low on her priority list as frivolous shopping. Even though their 13 later homes had kitchens, she reared her family essentially on TV dinners on tin trays. Fortunately, her husband was a specialist with delicacies like mac and cheese.

Jackie loved horses, family and friends. Among the latter, before dementia, she cherished her association with the fraternity of aged merry pranksters who meet mornings at Sandpoint’s Marigold Bistro to tell lame jokes, compete in describing personal medical misadventures and solve the world’s critical problems. Some locals refer to them affectionately as the Boisterous Bistro Buffoons — others simply as The Noisy Guys. Prior to falling ill, Jackie was their equivalent of the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi. In a photo with Bell System boss Charlie Brown at an unrelaxed New York City party, she appears somewhat flustered — not so in the photo on this page with Bistro Buffoon buddy Rex Cosgrove at breakfast downtown. 

Mumsie was a lover, was much loved by many, and would have loved to have made it to August 10, 2026 to remember with me in cherished Sandpoint our simple wedding, attended by five happy pals on Block Island, off the Connecticut coast that sweet summer of 1957.

Well, that’s it for now, Mumsie. Because music was so essential in our 70-year romance, let’s close this tribute humming Irving Berlin’s incomparable “I’ll Be Loving You, Always.”

— Tim Henney

The foregoing is published as a paid ad because this newspaper, so essential to Sandpoint’s culture, charm and collegiality, exists on reader contributions — including advertisements. 

— Tim Henney, Sandpoint

Hello Jusman!