Janet Lansing Wicks Gillespie Grindley

WOMEN OF WESTPORT POINT

Janet Lansing Wicks Gillespie Grindley (1913-2005)

Author

Scotch Pine Lane and 1935 Main Road, Westport Point

Janet Grindley

Jan was born Janet Lansing Wicks in East Orange, NJ in 1913. Her father Reverend Robert Russell Wicks later moved to Holyoke where she lived most of her childhood except for summers at Westport Point. Her mother, Eleanor MacMaster Hall Wicks spent many summers at Synton House that was built at the top of Scotch Pine Lane by her grandfather Charles Cuthbert Hall. Her parents later built Snowden House, next door to Synton. As a young child Jan spent endless hours birding, gardening with her grandmother, father and “mucking about in boats” on the river with family.

After graduating from Mount Holyoke College, she taught at Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Mass. In 1938 she married William Ernest “Ernie” Gillespie, a classics teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, NH. They met in Princeton, NJ where her father was then Dean of the Princeton Chapel. Ernie was a classmate of Jan’s brother Alden and had been invited to a family dinner when Jan was home visiting.

Jan and Ernie moved off campus and built their home in what was known as the Colonial Heights. Here they raised their four children, Hilly, Chip, Tim, and Peggy.  In 1956 Ernie had a year’s sabbatical and the entire family went to Europe where they bought a VW bus and toured throughout Italy and England. Jan wrote of their many adventures, trials, and tribulations in her first book, Bedlam in the Backseat. To offset the hardships of WWII, Jan and Ernie established bountiful gardens, a small apple orchard and raised chickens, which Jan took great pride in and wrote two books on gardening:  The Joy of a Small Garden and Peacock Manure and Marigolds.

When Ernie died in 1967, Jan began spending more time in Westport. In 1969 she married Robert Grindley who she met walking on Horseneck Beach. Bob was from Detroit and visiting good friends and family at Westport Point. They both moved permanently to the Point and in 1970 remodeled a dilapidated cow barn at 1935 Main Rd. It was here that she wrote her well-known book A Joyful Noise and its sequel With a Merry Heart. Both books chronicle Jan’s childhood growing up on “the hill” and the journeys from Holyoke to Westport.

At 1935 Main Road Jan created extensive garden beds. The first blooms were snowdrops that carpeted her secret walled garden, followed by bright yellow winter aconites, sky blue forget-me-nots and daffodils. She was well known for her gardening expertise and was asked to write a weekly column for The New Bedford Standard Times. She loved this opportunity to write and share her knowledge in what became penned The Carefree Gardener.

Jan loved Westport and being able to live in her favorite place and continue many traditions from her childhood. Her great gift is the wonderful books that she wrote describing the innocence of an era where happiness prevailed with an appreciation for the beauty in every minute of every day.

Jan died in her home with a view of the river, surrounded by all her family on a sunny afternoon, September 17, 2005.