Jeanne was the daughter of Robert Warren Cohen and Gussie Esther Solomon Cohen both second generation Jewish immigrants living in Youngstown, Ohio. After marrying, Bob and Gussie settled in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where they owned and operated a bar and grill during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Their first child Shirley was born there in October 1934 and Jeanne was born 16 months later in February 1936.

Soon after Jeanne’s birth, her parents moved back to Youngstown to open Bob’s Supermarket, a neighborhood grocery store on the north side of town. Although only about the size of a large 7-11, it was crammed with most everything a modern supermarket features including dry goods, freshly butchered meat and produce. The cash register was on a raised platform in the middle of the store and shelves along the walls ran from floor practically to ceiling. Jeanne’s younger brother Harry was born in Youngstown in February 1940.

Today, Youngstown and other mill towns in northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania are part of the rust belt. But, during its heyday, which coincided with Jeanne’s childhood, Youngstown was a thriving prosperous city of about 160K people. The Cohen family lived in a two-story brick house at 113 Dennick Avenue, a few blocks from the supermarket. Like most houses in the neighborhood, theirs was shaded by large trees and had a spacious front porch where the family spent summers playing cards and chatting with friends and visitors.

In Youngstown, Jeanne attended Harding elementary school, Rutherford B. Hayes Junior High School, and Rayen High school. She and her siblings worked in the family store after school. In addition, during her summers in High School, Jeanne worked as director of a city playground. She and her family were active in congregation Anshe Emeth.

After graduating high school in 1954, Jeanne attended her father’s alma mater, Ohio State University, where she majored in radio, speech and education. There, she met Abner Blackman, a geology student from New York City. The two were married in March 1956, Jeanne’s junior year, at Temple Anshe Emeth in Youngstown.

After graduating from Ohio State University in 1957, Jeanne and her husband moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana where Abner started an MA program in geology and Jeanne taught primary school. In February 1960, she gave birth to her first son, Edward. Later in 1960, the family moved to New Orleans, where Abner took a job with Shell Oil Company, and where the couple’s second son, Allen was born in March 1961. In the next year or two, the family moved to La Jolla, California, where Abner started a doctoral program at the University of California San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography and where Jeanne continued to teach.

In 1966, Jeanne and Abner separated and Jeanne moved back to Youngstown with her two sons. Four years later in 1970, Ed and Al moved to Washington, DC to live with their father, and Jeanne moved to Chicago, Illinois. In both Youngstown and Chicago, Jeanne worked for the county welfare department.

Jeanne’s move to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s marked the beginning of a reinvention. She took classes at California State-Los Angeles to obtain a teaching certificate and in 1984 returned to teaching primary school, a transition that brought much needed stability and satisfaction.

In the early 1990s, cuts to educational budgets led to ballooning class sizes in Los Angeles public schools. As a result, Jeanne decided to move to inland California where class sizes were smaller. In addition, she learned braille and obtained a certificate that qualified her to teach visually impaired and special needs children. She taught special education classes in three different inland towns in the 1990s: Modesto, Hanford, and finally, Calimesa near San Bernardino.

The year 2000 marked the beginning of a second reinvention for Jeanne. She retired from teaching in 2000 at the age of 64 and moved to the mountains around San Bernardino where she focused on a variety of hobbies including dance, yoga, poetry, gardening, flower arranging and photography. She adopted two beloved dogs, Sweetie and Ditty.

In 2004, around the time her son Ed moved from San Francisco to Boston, Jeanne moved to New Castle, PA about a half an hour from her hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. There, she continued to pursue her interests and hobbies. She taught dance, yoga and flower arranging at the local the seniors' center and took classes to become a master gardener. In 2007, she purchased a single-family home. She had a sign on her front door that read,  “Go around me, I’m retired,” and a well-manicured garden in the large back yard.

In the last decade of her life, Jeanne enjoyed being grandmother: Her first grandchild, Lily, was born in Washington, DC in June 2009. For several months, she wrote her a letter every day. In 2011, Jeanne’s second and third grandchildren were born: Abby in Washington, DC and Abner a few months later in Boston, Massachusetts.

By the summer of 2018, Jeanne could no longer live on her own, and moved to Southmayd Home: a small non-profit assisted living facility for women in Waterbury, Connecticut. The purpose was to find a place close to her son, Ed. Jeanne spent about 2 years at Southmayd.

Then in November of 2020, she fell. This incident triggered a series of health calamities that eventually overwhelmed her. She passed away on Monday February 1, 23 days shy of her 85 birthday.