Jennie Politis

Anybody who knew Jennie will remember her for her cheerfulness and upbeat outlook. An early riser, she lived a very long and active life.

Born in Eureka, CA on the 13th of June 1923, she was conceived somewhere on route to America from the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. Her parents were but two of the estimated two million Greek refugees scattered from their ancestral homeland to the far corners of the earth to make way for the new Turkish Republic. The nurse attending the birth could not understand her immigrant mother who wished to christen her Effrosini, and so wrote Jennie on the birth certificate instead. Somehow a middle initial A also appeared which nobody could ever explain.

Jen finished high school in the summer before Pearl Harbor and was hired by the Telephone Company as an all night operator. After a several years she rose to the position of office supervisor and stayed with the company for 46 years, moving first to San Rafael and then to San Francisco. In a company photograph of the executive staff taken in 1959, she is the only female amid forty male colleagues.

After retiring from Pac Bell, she began a second career. For several years she worked at various charities as a volunteer until finally she settled into a position at the book shop of the Legion of Honor. She loved the work, her colleagues, the people who frequented the museum and the beauty and location of the museum itself. She continued working there into her early 90’s until, after a second fall, she retired definitively.

Jen lived in her apartment on her own until the very end even as her eyesight dimmed and her hearing failed. Her two legs barely supported her but using a single point cane, she could still be seen making the rounds in the Castro to do her shopping until the ripe age of 97.

Free spirited and sassy to the end, nonetheless she was very much the lady, and held a special place in the hearts of all who knew her.

She is survived by her nephew and godson Stephen Liss who will organize a scattering of her ashes on a date in May to be announced, please call 415-626-3113 and leave a message, or leave a contact number with the Neptune Society. And, to those who might be inclined to send flowers, please consider planting instead a tree.