Jamie Marie Gilson

1933 - 2020

BORN

1933

DIED

2020

FUNERAL HOME

Donnellan Family Funeral Services

10045 Skokie Boulevard

Skokie, Illinois

Jamie Gilson Obituary

Name: Memorial service for Jamie Marie Gilson
Start: 2020-02-23T21:00:00.000Z
Location: Michigan Shores Club

Jamie Marie Gilson, 86, of Wilmette, died on February 11 after a long illness. Born on the 4th of July 1933, in Beardstown, Illinois, to James and Sallie Chisam, Jamie spent her childhood in small towns around the Midwest. She later attended the University of Missouri, where she met her husband-to-be, and graduated from Northwestern University's School of Speech with a degree in communications. Jamie wrote and performed in radio shows for WBEZ, wrote radio commercials for WFMT, films, film strips, and many, many columns for Chicago magazine. She was featured in Life Magazine as a junior winner of the 1954 Pillsbury Bake-Off. Jamie wrote twenty-one books for children, starting with Harvey the Beer Can King in 1978. Her best-seller was Thirteen Ways to Sink a Sub, about a fourth-grade class and their substitute teacher. She was especially proud of her historical novel for kids, Stink Alley, about young Pilgrim Lizzie Tinker getting up to mischief in Holland in 1614. Her final book, My Teacher is an Idiom, was published in 2015, when she was eighty-two. She listened intently to kids, often at Wilmette's Central School, and wrote about what she heard. Her books spanned a huge breadth of topics, including bats, catfish, soccer, baking contests, archeology, chess, and dyslexia. She received many awards for her books, including the Carl Sandburg Award, the Charlie May Simon Award, the Prairie State Award for Excellence in Writing for Children, the Society of Midland Authors Award for Children's Fiction, the Buckeye Children's Book Award, the Pacific Northwest Young Reader's Choice Award and the Sequoyah Book Award. She also taught kids how to write poetry. Jamie loved words and was good at them. She is survived by her devoted husband Jerry of 64 years, kids Tom, Matthew and wife Holly, Anne and husband Martin, and grandkids Sam, Griffin, Noah, Tess, Henry, and Beatrix. Memorial Service Sunday, February 23, 2020, 3:00 p.m. at Michigan Shores Club, 911 Michigan Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091. Info: www.donnellanfuneral.com or (847) 675-1990.

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Published by Chicago Tribune from Feb. 16 to Feb. 20, 2020.

Memories and Condolences
for Jamie Gilson

9 Entries

RICK JOHNSON

April 25, 2023

Jamie Gilson helped me get an A in Writing for Professional Publication, a graduate class at Northern Illinois University in the early 1970s. She let me write a review of Do Bananas Chew Gum and biography of her for Language Arts Magazine. Jamie so kindly said I made her famous with that article, but she did not need my help to become famous as one of our most beloved writers of novels for young readers. Jamie visited the schools I worked at, and kept her audience of elementary students enthralled with her stories, including winning the Pillsbury Bake-Off! A life should be measured more by its deeds than its duration, but Jamie Gilson enjoyed both a long life and adoration by her many reading fans, many who are still enjoying the characters and their adventures in her 21 books to this day! Jamie Gilson has achieved immortality!

Blake Schriedel

April 24, 2023

I have many fond memories of Jamie. I had the pleasure of being friends with her son Matt and am honored, although under a slightly altered name, to be included in her first book, Harvey the Beer Can King. May she rest in peace and may her friends and family delight in their happy remembrances of their time with her. -Blake Schriedel-

February 20, 2020

Thinking of the family and wishing them comfort and peace

Rick Johnson

February 19, 2020

My wife and I are so sad to hear of Jamie's passing. We loved sharing her books with our elementary students, and I will always be indebted to her for her part in my getting an A grade in "Writing for Professional Publication", a graduate course I was taking at NIU in the lates 70s. Jamie let me interview her for Language Arts Magazine, and my article was published! She told me my article made her famous, but what made Jamie famous was her writing skill and her ability to understand what young children were thinking about and interested in doing in their lives. She was one of the earliest authors to take on subjects for young readers like living with a learning disability as in Do Bananas Chew Gum? My wife and I will always be grateful to having hosted Jamie for dinner in our Aurora home when we had her as an author in residence. She was truly a great person, and we will always remember her. Our sympathy to the family, and we hope you are comforted in knowing how much she was loved by her family of educators, librarians, and readers.

February 19, 2020

Thinking of the family and wishing them comfort and peace

February 17, 2020

My condolences to the family . May you find comfort in your treasured memories and Gods promise to return our loved ones who passed away in death . 1st Thessalonians 4 : 13 & 14 .

Lynn Bialk

February 16, 2020

Jamie was a great author of children's books!
She was a good friend to the students of McKenzie School in Wilmette. She would come and speak to the fourth grade students and tell stories about how she wrote 4B Goes Wild , a book about Outdoor Ed. She was generous with her time and sparked enthusiasm for budding writers.
She will be greatly missed,

Dick Bell

February 14, 2020

Of Jamie's many social graces, one struck me as so unusual that I think of it as her own. Often Jamie obviously knew much more or had much better ideas about the subjects of our conversations, but she explored those subjects with me as if I were her equal partner.

February 13, 2020

I am so sorry for your loss...I hope that you can find comfort within Gods promise to reunite us with our loved ones. This promise is found at John 6:40. May the God of all comfort be with the friends and family during this difficult time.

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