Obituaries

Jeanne Lisker Bellman
April 20, 1926 – February 17, 2019

Resident of Claremont, California for 52 years, recently passed away at the age of 92 from complications following a stroke. She was born in Chicago, Illinois to Hyman and Sonia Lisker, the second of two children born to their Ukranian immigrant parents. Graduating high school during World War II, Jeanne worked her way through college in a defense plant and as a secretary before joining the Hearst-owned International News Service. There she worked full-time for two years, attending college at night, until she was able to graduate. In 1950, she began teaching elementary school. A friend soon introduced Jeanne to the friend’s cousin Samuel, the man she would later marry. Like many women of her generation, Jeanne set aside her own aspirations to put her husband through graduate school and launch his academic career. They raised two sons, and Jeanne and Sam’s spirit lives on through them, ensuring that the Bellman family tradition of writing, teaching and lifelong learning and cultural pursuits will continue. Jeanne lived out her final years at the Mt. San Antonio Gardens retirement community in Pomona, pursuing the activities she enjoyed, including book clubs, movies, and volunteer work, in the company of friends that she loved. She is survived by her sons Joel (Hope Singer) and Jonathan (Deborah Kauffman); grandsons Malcolm, Corran and Benjamin; her nephew Perry Lisker (Constance Norton) and niece Barbara (Jonathan Goldsmith); her sister-in-law Deanna (Jerry Kasten) and many other relatives and friends in California, Illinois, and throughout the American Southwest. Her husband Samuel predeceased her in 2009. Funeral services will be held at Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary, 6001 Centinela Ave., Los Angeles on February 22 at 11:00 a.m. A celebration of Jeannes’s life will be scheduled at a future date.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center (https://donate.splcaction.org) The ACLU of Southern California-https://action.aclu.org/give/support-sclu-socal, or the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles-https://my.lwv.org/california/los-angeles