Jaimie Allison Ross

Ross, Jaimie Allison

The close family of Jaimie Ross sadly announce her death on August 20, 2025. Her immediate family included her partner, Mark Hendrickson, their son, Eli Ross, beyond best friend, Billie Jo Owens, and stepdaughter, Katie Hendrickson. Jaimie is also survived by her sisters, Lorrie, Donna and Abby, their spouses, partners, children and grandchildren.

Jaimie was born in Tarrytown, New York, and was raised in New Rochelle by her parents, the late Benjamin and Leatrice Ross. As a teenager, Jaimie showed her independent nature by often making the short ride by train into New York City's West Village. She graduated from high school at age 16 and embarked immediately on an independent journey by bus across America, ending up working for a year in a clothing store in Santa Barbara, California.

Jaimie moved to Florida and after years of employment and undergraduate education at night, she enrolled in the law school at Florida State University. She graduated with honors in 1986 and became the first student to simultaneously serve on Law Review and the Journal of Environmental and Land Use Law.

Jaimie's legal career began with real estate law with a firm in Orlando. It is there that she found her professional passion – affordable housing. As a pro bono assignment, she worked with a group of nuns trying to build farmworker housing in Apopka. She carried them through legal battles, and the housing was built. Offered a partnership in the firm, Jaimie opted out of traditional legal work and moved to Tallahassee to begin her 30-year career in public interest law.

Jaimie's professional accomplishments are too many to list. Most importantly, she was the driving force that created the Sadowski Coalition leading to Florida becoming the first state to have a revenue source dedicated solely for affordable housing. Through her work, hundreds of thousands of units were built or sold, providing affordable housing to over one million Floridians.

But that incredible professional resume tells one nothing about the type of person Jaimie was. First, she was a fierce secular Jew, guided by the principle Tikkun Olam, or "repair the world." Jaimie's passion for social justice was unbounding. She had an unerring moral compass and no problem sharing what she believed was right and acting on that belief despite opposition from powerful adversaries.

From such a description, one might think Jaimie was one tough character. She was. But she had no tolerance for those that did not share her joy for life. She had a dishtowel in her house with the quote from Emma Goldman, "If I cannot dance, I want no part in your revolution."

Oh, how Jaimie loved to dance. From Bad Bunny to Hank Williams, she could make the moves. Her joy when dancing was overflowing and infectious.

Regarding love, Jaimie's love for her son Eli was unbounding. While holding down demanding and time-consuming full-time jobs, every day she put a note in Eli's lunch and drove him to and picked him up from school. She was a full-time attorney and CEO and at the same time a full-time mom.

Jaimie also loved Pass-a-Grille Beach, which she walked hundreds of times at sunset, sending photos and letting everyone know that no two sunsets were the same.

Jaimie was a voracious reader and incredible writer. She would scold us if we didn't share with you that her favorite book was Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible" and tell everyone that they must read it.

Jaimie loved hiking and traveling, hitting trails from Maine to Utah. She also loved Scotland where her Americanized name "Ross" led many a Scot to incorrectly welcome her home.

Jaimie lived with cancer for 25 years, with all the ups, downs, treatments, hope and pain that accompanies that journey. Jaimie never bemoaned her situation, instead living each day to the fullest, making a difference in the world and sharing her love and joy of life with family and others. Jaimie put it best when she wrote, "I have not fought cancer; I have not lost a battle to cancer. Cancer presented challenges, but cancer enriched my life from initial diagnosis until the end of my life. I appreciated every day, every sunrise and sunset and every moment I had just a little more because of my cancer. Hence, cancer was my constant companion and one that delivered more benefit than detriment."

Jaimie was never reticent to share her opinions on any subject, or to give explicit directions to those around her. She left those closest to her written instructions on how we should take care of each other, by combining the best qualities of us all – which Jaimie listed out for us in case we might forget.

But with those instructions came something more important, Jaimie's feelings on death. She stated, "I believe in the moral of the movie Coco. So long as you remember your loved ones they are not gone. I believe we all live on in the lives of those who knew us. I love you forever."

And for all of us who knew Jaimie, family, friends and colleagues, Jaimie lives on in us so long as we carry her love of life and passion for justice with us.

View Guest Book www.tampabay.com/obits