Jeanette Ehrhart Ingrasci died peacefully on May 28, 2020, at Amita/LaGrange Hospital, from complications of her two-year struggle to overcome heart disease, COPD, and bone-marrow cancer. She was 77, having been born in 1943 in her hometown of Quincy, IL, the daughter of John and Jeanette Ehrhart. After graduating from Quincy’s Notre Dame High School, her scholarships at St. Louis University garnered her the B.A., Master’s, and Ph.D. degrees in history which were the foundation of her later careers. Her concentration in American Political History and American Studies gave her a keen sense of our nation’s intellectual currents underpinning its culture and its value-systems’ bases, an education that permeated her careers in teaching, editing, writing, and mass-marketing.

             As a graduate student she taught at City House, an academy of the Madams of the Sacred Heart, one of whose noteworthy alumnae was Kate Chopin, famed author of pre-feminist fiction: The Awakening, “Desiree’s Baby.” She also taught at Roosevelt High School in St. Louis. After her marriage to Hugh James Ingrasci in 1966, the couple lived in New York State, where she taught European Civilization and courses in 19^th and 20^th century American history.

            People who met Jeanette, especially her students, would often remark that “she looks like Julie Andrews.” Jeanette’s facial resemblance clearly prompted these initial impressions, but what the reactions really expressed was that she was as likeable as Julie Andrews. People instinctively responded to her warmth, her vibrancy, her spunk, and the generosity that fueled her quick-witted conversations and her openness in relating to everyone she met. One of the musicians she played with in the West Suburban Symphony as a cellist, captured the zeitgeist of her personality: “You know, Mozart’s sonatas make you come fully alive, and Jeanette’s like that – fully alive, and she makes you feel that way.” Jeanette’s being likeable got her elected as the president of her symphonic group for the many years during which she lived in Hinsdale and Western Springs, IL. As such, she hired conductors, booked venues, hired guest soloists, and handled both publicity and box office sales for the organization. She also got recruited to become a Cub Scout den mother, and later, a Girl Scout troop leader for her daughter, Rachel, and then volunteered to lead fund drives for her local Girl Scout region (motivating her son, Matthew, to become an Eagle Scout). The area’s garden club was also one of her blissful pursuits, and she daily tended her own garden, so that it blossomed with the colors of the season. She was ever on her knees, attentively weeding and pruning her pampered plants and bushes.

             Jeanette’s second career path led her to become a senior editor at three Chicago publishing houses: Rand McNally, Harcourt Brace, and Benefic Press. Her gifts of writing, editing, and the cut-and-paste composing of texts helped her create the marketing appeal of a number of best-selling high school history texts, distributed nationally. Jeanette co-presented these texts (to state school boards) with sales reps to get these books adopted for state-wide use.

             In her final two phases of her career, she became a “work-at-home mom” for her daughter, Rachel, and son, Matt (sometimes called upon to offer her consultant services “on location” at various midwestern business conferences). Jeanette’s marketing skills now came to the fore as a consultant for the Wilson Learning Corporation, facilitating workshops for large-scale business executives and their salespersons: seminars in cross-selling, team-building, overcoming sales resistance, and the need for time-management (efficiency) skills. These workshops led to her final career move, a consulting position with Time-Warner. As an independent consultant Jeanette collaborated with the V.P. of Training and Development for Time Inc.’s Sales & Marketing Division to launch and establish a Training Department in the mid-1980s. Her work in developing written and testing materials across a broad spectrum of industry initiatives was significant: its excellence was recognized by the company, and her impact upon the sales staff became her legacy to them for the next 30 years. Her specific work for People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Money, and Fortune, helped to introduce and educate the sales force and marketing department to the nuances of periodical distribution. Through the use of skilled writing and editing, she was able to take industry jargon and technical details and turn them into documents that engaged both the new and veteran employees, and fueled a period of record newsstand sales. Her manager at Time-Warner best describes her contribution: “Jeanette was involved in every aspect of the establishment of Sales and Marketing Training at TWR. Her ability to quickly grasp the subject matter and turn it into the printed work was remarkable, and she is worthy of as much credit and praise as I am for our success in making People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Money, and Fortune magazines the preeminent news publications that the public reads today.”

             Jeanette’s spirit, her love of life, and her warm-heartedness will be fondly missed by her sister Elizabeth (Greg) Blaine, her brothers John (Dana) Ehrhart and Steve (Joan) Ehrhart; her nieces Kathryn (Mike) Puffenberger, Margaret (Troy) Reynolds, Elizabeth (David) Lombardi, Ann (Andrew) Leavitt, and Jane Ehrhart; her nephews Ben (Jamie) Ehrhart and Ned Blaine; her childhood-on cousins Barbara (Claus) Rode, Paul (Denise) Blaesing, and Mark (Connie) Blaesing. Most of all, the treasure of her presence will be absent from her oh-so-fortunate husband of 54 years, Hugh, and the “most important charges in her life”: her son and daughter, Matt and Rachel. We will all tuck her in tenderly in our memories as that unforgettable, fully human being who was not only just plain likeable, but irresistibly loveable.

Services private. In lieu of flowers, her family requests that donations be made to the Ehrhart Scholarship Fund at Quincy Notre Dame High School: 1400 11th St., Quincy, IL 62301.
Arrangements entrusted to Hallowell & James Funeral Home, Countryside at 708-352-6500.