Martha Mosier

Martha Jean Mosier, known and loved as Jean, Granny, Grandma, and Grandma Jean, died on May 6, 2011, at the fine age of 90. She was born Martha Matilda Kates in Illinois on December 5, 1920. Her early life included adversity and mystery. She likely never knew her birth parents and was adopted with her brother John, from an orphanage when she was two years old. Her adoptive parents later divorced. By all accounts, she was a wild child and young adult and took off early from her family to make her way in life. She lost track of her brother following World War II after he moved to California in the early ’50s and seldom kept in contact with her parents.

Her young adulthood included Chicago, St. Louis, and Harleys and Indian motorcycles, which she often expressed joy at riding. Even when she was in her 80s, she would relish the opportunity to hitch a ride with friends from Pass-a-Grille who would offer her a ride over the Skyway Bridge and back on their Harleys.

Don Mosier, her last husband, seemed to be a steadying influence on her during the thirty years they were married from the early 1950s until his death in 1982. Yet, they moved between St. Louis; Madeira Beach, Florida; St. Joseph, Missouri, and Orlando, Florida, over the course of 10 years. She resided in Pass-a-Grille and Gulfport for the final twenty years of her life, where she made many friends and was known by many who lived or visited there.

Although she seldom drank alcohol, she tremendously enjoyed hanging out at establishments from the old Flamingo Bar and Grill on Madeira Beach in the 1950s to Shadracks on Pass-a-Grille in her later years, where she would “shoot the breeze,” tell her “off color” jokes and enjoy the company of characters as colorful as she was. She had a quick wit and could employ a sharp tongue at times. 

Perhaps her happiest times in her latter years were spent on St. Pete Beach where she had a tiny apartment on 8^th Avenue for many years. She organized numerous potlucks around the holidays, boat parades and her birthday. Everyone was invited, and a very eclectic group of people would enthusiastically partake of her fine culinary offerings. During those years, she rarely met a stranger; everyone loved her, and she was known by all from the early crowd at the Seahorse to the late crowd at the other establishments in the vicinity. She spent another few years in an apartment in Gulfport where her sons Don and Ed and daughters-in-law Debbie and Kitty looked out for her until her memory loss required more constant care.

The past five years she lived at Freedom Square in Seminole.

She is remembered fondly by her children Sharon van der Berg, Thom Mosier (Maureen), Don Mosier (Debbie) and Ed Rawson (Kitty), twelve grandchildren and numerous great-grand children. Family and close friends will celebrate her life as she would have wanted, with a potluck picnic later in the summer.

Gifts in her memory should be directed to Suncoast Hospice Foundation, 5771 Roosevelt Blvd., Clearwater, FL 33760. Make checks payable to: Suncoast Hospice Foundation.