Jean Myers (right) and her daughter, Lisa Myers, during a 2014 helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon. “She was a lot of fun,” Lisa said of her mother. Facebook photo
Princess Jean Allen Myers was, to the community, simply Jean — the woman in the big down coat selling Eden Prairie Optimist Club Christmas trees, the recruiter who could turn a stranger into a volunteer, the neighbor who remembered your name and asked about your family.
Jean Myers, pictured in a family photo, spent decades volunteering and building community in Eden Prairie. Submitted photo
Myers, a longtime Eden Prairie volunteer and community fixture, died Oct. 31 at Amira Choice Bloomington. She was 91.
Her daughter, Lisa Myers, said the description she heard again and again after her mother’s death was the same: “I loved her. I just loved her.”
“She was a doer,” her daughter said. “She was kind to everyone. She hardly ever had a bad word to say about anybody — not never, but almost never — and she was a lot of fun.”
Jean’s life began far from Eden Prairie, in Hope, Arkansas, where she was the 12th of 12 children born to Alma Beatrice Smith Allen and James Gordon “Bud” Allen. The family home had no indoor plumbing; they used an outhouse. Growing up that way, her daughter said, gave her an early appreciation for small comforts and simple pleasures.
She earned a nursing degree from Arkansas Baptist Hospital in Little Rock. While there, she met Warren Myers, the love of her life. The couple moved from Fargo, North Dakota, to Plattsburgh, New York, to Albany, Georgia, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before settling in Eden Prairie in 1966 with their two young children, Lisa and Jim.
Jean Myers received a Melvin Jones Fellowship — the highest honor bestowed by Lions Clubs International Foundation for humanitarian service — at a 2016 Eden Prairie Lioness Lions Club meeting. Credit: EP Lioness Lions Club/Facebook
She spent the next six decades shaping the community that became her home.
With a friend and neighbor, she opened ABC Day Nursery, the city’s first day care and nursery school, and ran it for about 25 years. Later, she launched Rae Jean, an upscale women’s clothing store in Eden Prairie Center mall, hosting fashion shows and dressing friends “in style,” as Lisa put it. She drew on her growing network, enlisting Optimists, Lioness Lions Club members and church friends as models.
In 1980, as she prepared to open the clothing store, Warren died suddenly. Jean was 46. She already had a successful daycare business and two college-age children. Lisa remembers that moment as a turning point in her mother’s life.
“She … had two choices: mope around the house and be sad the rest of your life, or pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do something,” Lisa said. “She always was a giving, caring person, but I think that (volunteering) filled her back up in a different way, but, you know, in a good way for her.”
A life of service
Over the years, Jean poured that energy into Eden Prairie.
She held leadership roles in the Eden Prairie Lioness Lions Club, Eden Prairie Optimist Club, Eden Prairie Foundation, the ABC House board, the city’s Crime Prevention Fund and the Community Education Advisory Council.
Lisa Toomey (left), now an Eden Prairie City Council member, with Jean Myers in 2015. Facebook photo
At Eden Prairie United Methodist Church, she oversaw hospitality for more than 30 years, coordinating funeral luncheons, special events and anything involving the kitchen.
Lisa Toomey, an Eden Prairie City Council member, met Jean nearly 25 years ago at a Lioness meeting and later spoke at her funeral.
“If someone needed help, she volunteered. If there was work to be done, she was already doing it,” Toomey said.
Toomey recalled how Jean could charm almost anyone — even strangers on Lake Waconia. On one outing, another boat passed by and Jean shouted, “How’s your mom and them?”
It was a phrase Toomey had never heard.
“I said, ‘Do you know those people? Why are you asking about their mother?’” Toomey told mourners. Only later did she learn it was Jean’s way of greeting people — a Southern shorthand for checking on someone’s whole family.
Jean’s welcome extended to four-legged visitors. Toomey’s family dog, Lulu, “would go nuts” as soon as they turned into Jean’s driveway, sprinting to the front door and pawing to be let inside. In the neighborhood, Jean was also known for “Jean’s Dump-a-Dawg,” her joking name for the informal dog-sitting operation she ran for friends, family and neighbors.
On one business card, Lisa Myers said, the name was spelled out as “Dump-a-Dawg,” D-A-W-G.
Her favorite job, though, was “Granny Nanny.” Jean cared for her three grandchildren — Heather, Justine and Eric — through their preschool years and beyond. When they reached kindergarten, some came off the school bus at her house. Lisa said her mother never claimed to have “raised” the children — that belonged to their parents — but Jean’s time with them left a mark.
“She took care of them … and you can tell in those kids that she did some good stuff,” Lisa Myers said.
Jean’s Southern roots also carried a bit of local lore. “She once told me that she babysat Bill Clinton,” Toomey said during the service. “I’m not sure if that’s true, but that’s what I tell people.”
Her daughter is less convinced.
“I kind of think not,” Lisa Myers said. The families are distantly related — “his great-grandmother and my great-grandmother were sisters” — but Clinton left Hope for Hot Springs as a child.
Faith, grammar, and hospitality
The Rev. Rusty Brace, who grew up in Eden Prairie and knew the Myers family through Jean’s son, Jim, also spoke at her funeral. He described her as both exacting and expansive — a grammar stickler who also made her kitchen feel like a second home.
He remembered WCCO playing in the background, a coffee pot that always seemed to be on, and a house full of teenagers tinkering with cars in the garage.
“The second time I was in her kitchen, I asked if I could have a glass of water, and she said, ‘Hon, you’ve been here before. You’re no longer a guest,’” he told mourners. “Because she was like Olive Garden — if you were there, you were family.”
Brace said she loved crossword puzzles, grammar and wordplay, gently chiding him for “go with” constructions and split infinitives. At the same time, he said, “She created space for welcome and warmth,” and “Jean represented in her life, the best of what it means to live in a community as part of your extended family.”
Jean also played a quiet role in Brace’s faith. As a teenager, he said, he drifted away from church and complained that all congregations ever did was talk about money. Jean insisted her church was different.
“Not my church,” he recalled her saying. “You have to come and see my church.”
When he finally showed up at Eden Prairie United Methodist, he discovered it was stewardship Sunday and the sermon was, in fact, about money and giving. They laughed about that for years. For Brace, the episode underscored something else: Jean’s belief that church was about community, service and welcome — not obligation.
“She evangelized by example,” he said. “She led joy and welcome.”
Jean Myers and her daughter, Lisa Myers, enjoy a Fourth of July outing at Lord Fletcher’s Old Lake Lodge on Lake Minnetonka in 2013. Family and friends remembered Jean for her warmth, humor and decades of community service in Eden Prairie. Facebook photo
Later years
Jean began stepping back from some volunteer work in her early 80s, Lisa said. She gave up leading church hospitality after more than three decades and eventually stopped teaching water aerobics at the Eden Prairie Community Center, where she had once filled in when instructors failed to show up and was eventually asked to lead classes of her own.
She continued to attend classes and stay active until health issues, including a serious bout of sciatica several years ago, slowed her down. Three years ago, she moved to memory care at Amira Choice Bloomington.
“She never forgot who we were,” Lisa said.
Asked how her mother would want to be remembered, her daughter didn’t hesitate:
“Oh, probably with a good glass of wine,” she said. “Red. It has to be red.”
Toomey told mourners that Jean’s influence extended far beyond those who knew her personally.
“There are people in this city who will never know her name, but their lives are better because she was here,” she said. “She made generosity look like an ordinary part of everyday life, and being around her made you want to show up too.”
Toomey said Jean never sought recognition or awards.
“She just gave over and over,” she said. “So today, we have an opportunity to give something back. Please join me in giving Jean a round of applause and gratitude to honor her extraordinary life.”
Jean is survived by her children, Lisa Myers and Jim Myers (Theresa “Terri”); grandchildren Heather Myers, Justine Myers and Eric Myers; and many nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her husband, Warren; her parents; and her 11 siblings.
Her funeral was held Nov. 11 at Eden Prairie United Methodist Church, where she had spent decades brewing coffee, organizing meals and making sure no one who walked through the door felt like a stranger.
“She made a difference,” Lisa Myers said. “A lot of people get to the end of their life and say, ‘I was like that,’ and maybe they did too. But she made a difference in a bigger way than a lot of people do, because she cared so much about the community as well as her people. She would want you to live your life, do things, go on adventures, help people, make a difference. That’s what she did — a life well lived.”