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<\/a><\/p>\nThree weeks after Valmae\u2019s birth, the family moved from Lowestoft to Nottingham and two years later back to Newbold for another six years. Roy\u2019s students regularly heard his praise of Jean as what in those days was seen as an \u2018ideal\u2019 minister\u2019s wife. She coped with the regular uprooting of the family in house moves. She worked hard both at home and in the church community always in the background and ready to lend a hand. She cooked and balanced the household budget while practising the arts of hospitality at the hint of a need.<\/p>\n
In 1967, another move took the family to Watford where Roy was in great demand, first as leader of three church departments and then as leader of the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church in the south of England. The family spent their second term at Newbold from 1971 to 1976 when Jean worked as a library assistant and Roy served five years as principal. In 1977, following Roy\u2019s appointment to the SDA Seminary at Andrews University, the Grahams moved to Berrien Springs, Michigan where Roy was appointed Provost in 1979. From 1979, through the time of Roy\u2019s cancer and death in 1984, until her retirement in 1995, Jean worked as a secretary in the Andrews University Department of Education.<\/p>\n
On her retirement, Jean moved to Florida to live near her daughter and son-in-law Valmae and Cecil Lowry. She treasured her two granddaughters Rachel and Carolyn in Florida, and Mark and Hilda, children of Ian and Sirry in Oxford, not to mention her great grandchildren as they arrived.<\/p>\n
Throughout the years, the ravages of cancer took their toll on Jean\u2019s family. Seven years after Roy\u2019s death, Jean\u2019s daughter-in-law, Sirr\u00ff, passed in August 1991. Finally in January this year, her 39-year-old granddaughter, Rachel Lowry Meharry also died of cancer. In these impossibly difficult experiences and until dementia took her away from her real self, Jean was a rock of deep faith and down-to-earth common sense. Her many friends in the UK, the USA and around the world can testify to her maternal warmth, her merry laugh, and her readiness to shed a compassionate tear in solidarity during a difficult experience. The ripples created by her passing will extend a long way.<\/p>\n
Jean is survived by her brother, Peter Cooper, her two children, three grandchildren and four great grandchildren \u2013 Joshua and Lily, Eliana and Benjamin.<\/p>\n
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