Jane Paulette Roosevelt

Jane P. Roosevelt, a long-time resident of Rumson, NJ and later of Shadow Lake in Red Bank NJ, passed away in Laconia, New Hampshire in the early hours of April 16, 2024.

Jane, known to all as Mary Jane, was born on January 9, 1926 in Nancy, France to Paul and Henriette (Jacques) Seeligmann. By all accounts she enjoyed a carefree life of charm and privilege playing in the Parque de la Pépiniere, attending the opera matinees in the family's box and eating the bergamot candies that Nancy is famed for. And then when the war arrived, Mary Jane was sent to a convent school in Lyon. There she was kept safe for several years, where her coveted possession was one small nub of a pencil for practicing penmanship. Mary Jane was later reunited with her family in Nancy after the war, where they all had miraculously survived but were forever changed. She attended university in Nancy where she studied pharmacology.

She met her future husband, James Frank Roosevelt, while tending to the graves of fallen soldiers after the war had ended. She attended a mixer for American Officers with him and the rest is history. They married in 1949, and welcomed treasured son, James West Roosevelt, in 1950. Their lives together brought them to Frankfurt, Germany, la Rochelle, France, Long Branch, New Jersey, Geneva, Switzerland, and Rumson, New Jersey. During this time, they had a full and vibrant social calendar and collected friends from all walks of life from titans of the automotive industry to titled sophisticates to rakes with colorful nicknames. During these years, Mary Jane perfected her golf game, her bridge prowess and her sharp eye for antiques. They permanently left Geneva for Rumson, New Jersey in the early 1970s where Mary Jane became a member of the Appraiser's Association and ran her antiques business on River Road for four decades. Her husband took up a culinary practice that required using every pan and implement in the house, backing it up with a fully stocked bar and hand printed menus before passing away in 1983. Mary Jane never remarried but it wasn't for lack of enamored suitors in need of a life master bridge partner. She later moved to retirement community Shadow Lake, in Red Bank, New Jersey where she golfed, played bridge and yet still continued to purchase antiques and market them on eBay. For the past six years she has resided at Taylor Community, the last three under hospice care after contracting a serious lung infection in 2021. She left the nurses, doctors, insurance agents and annuity brokers of the east coast in a state of wonder with her resiliency and dazzling smile.

She leaves behind her son, James (Marcia) and grandson, Edward, aka Ned. We are positive she had many friends gathered to greet her this morning along with every dog, cat, squirrel, chipmunk, raccoon, skunk and bird who ever crossed her path.

Mary Jane was the most beautiful person who ever lived.