Anne M. Bladstrom

Anne M. Bladstrom
May 4, 1930 – April 1, 2023
Anne Bladstrom, 92, died at her home in Sarasota, Florida.
Anne was born in Minneapolis, the native city of her parents, Walter Maiser and Blanche Stodola Maiser. Anne spent her early years in small towns on the upper Mississippi where her father, a civil engineer, was building dams for the WPA. In a sense she was a child of FDR's New Deal. She was a life-long liberal, with a passion for fairness and social justice.
She received her B.A. from Case Western Reserve University and her master's degree in library science from Columbia University, after which she held a series of positions as a business research librarian, first on Madison Avenue and then on Wall Street. She and her husband Walter moved to Sarasota in 1994, where Anne served on the boards of the Lemur Conservation Foundation and the Casey Key Library Association.
Anne was tall, beautiful, curious, mercurial, and most of all loving and generous. She had an extraordinary visual flair, which she expressed in the homes and gardens she created, and the flamboyant one-of-a-kind clothes she wore. She was devoted to her extended family. She leaves a son, Jay Wickersham (Joan) of Cambridge, MA; a stepdaughter, Evalyn Bladstrom (Jon Rosenbloom) of Chappaqua, NY; her grandsons Thomas, Alec, and Everett; her sisters Janet Jacquette and Catherine Krane; and many nieces and nephews. Her husband, Walter, died in 2019. The family is grateful for her expert caregiving team, led by Susan Vowels and Michelle La Scala, and most especially would like to express thanks to Robert Ecton, who took such devoted and sensitive care of Anne for her last few years.
Anne's greatest passion was for books and reading. Up until her death she read three newspapers every day. Her bookshelves were a library in themselves, a place to delve into art and architecture, biographies and history and poetry, noir mysteries and classic English novels. In the words of Annie Dillard, "She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live." She was a loyal patron of Sarasota's independent Bookstore 1, where she might buy five or six books every week. If you would like to honor her memory, buy a book for yourself or for someone you love.