• Born Jane Gray on July 24, 1927 in Madison Wisconsin, but was always known as Jill.
• She’s a little ditzy; doesn’t like driving; especially doesn’t like changing lanes on the highway.
• Whenever we couldn’t find something, she would tell us to check the cedar closet up on the third floor.
• She gave a talk once at Yale entitled Ode to Sness, that was a huge hit.
• She’s done tons of amateur theatre, even played Fagan as a woman in Oliver!
• She would do “our days,” which were shopping days with just one of the kids.
• She has a couple of famous dishes, including Risotto a la Lindy, named after a babysitter who taught her how to make it 30 years ago.
• She used to interfere with our homework, to make it better.
• After she retired from Yale, she and Dad sold personalized leather bookmarks to charitable organizations. They would attend trade shows and she mostly read her book while he talked to customers. She has never actually used one of Dad’s elegant bookmarks! She uses whatever she can find.
Wise-acres and blabbermouths
Gather around.
You wanna talk about mothers?
Mine eclipses all others.
Sore losers and also-rans
I don’t wanna hear a sound.
Pay attention, you’ll get your fill
Of the phenomenon known as Jill
She’s the best of the red hot mamas
The kind her rivals strive to be.
Jackie Kennedy? Lady Bird Johnson?
The real first lady is this Jane from Wisconsin!
She, God bless her,
Made Frank Loesser
Wish he’d called it “Guys & Janes”
Occasionally hazy
But only drives you crazy
If it don’t involve changing lanes.
Like the great ’Lizabethan dramas,
Her “Ode To Sness” is quite sublime!
I was balancing my checkbook
Couldn’t find my last deposit.
She told me that I’d find it
If I checked the cedar closet.
She’s the best of the red hot mamas
And she’s getting better all the time!
She’s the best of the red hot mamas
The kind her rivals strive to be.
She loves a challenge; hey, what the heck, she’ll
Have a go at playing Fagan as a transsexual.
If you’ve had a hard day,
She’ll propose an “our day”
(It’s agony to have to wait!)
And happily unload a
Mountain of risotto
On your dinner plate.
She’ll dispell all your childhood traumas
And help you make your poems rhyme.
When she’s hawking leather bookmarks
And she spots a likely target
She shuts her paperback
And leaves a boarding card to mark it.
She’s the best of the red hot mamas
And she’s getting better all the time!