Island Profile: A fan of Queen Anne’s lace sows the seeds of an Island life

Jean Schultheis Brechter first summered on Shelter Island a couple of months after she was born. That was in April 1923 and she was here the following June in the tradition of the Schultheis family, whose members already were long-time Shelter Island summer residents. “No matter where we were, we always seemed to come back to the Island — summers and weekends and vacations,” Ms. Brechter said recently.

Jean grew up in Flushing, where her father, a physician, was a general practitioner with his office attached to the house. “It was quite wonderful being the daughter of a beloved local doctor. Everybody loved Doctor Dan,” she said. She went to elementary school there and for high school she was a five-day boarder at the Cathedral School of Saint Mary’s in Garden City. “I loved it. I got a wonderful education there,” she said.

That education and her grades got her into Cornell University, where she majored in English with a minor in philosophy. She graduated in January of 1949. “I was always afraid I might flunk something so I always took extra courses” and discovered she had enough credits to graduate early.

A few months after graduation, she married Robert Brechter, whom she had known in Garden City and encountered again at Cornell. Discharged from the Navy, where he had trained as a pilot, he was ready to join his father, a partner in the Vandyck-Churchill Co., a machine tool distributor. It was his work there that determined the couple’s hometown for the next 20 years.

First sent to Cincinnati for training, they later moved to New Haven, Connecticut, one of three major sites of his father’s company. There she joined a garden club — and now she’s president of one, Shelter Island’s. “I was a brand new bride, and they loved me,” she said of the other gardeners in New Haven. “I was the baby and they took such good care of me and taught me so well. That was my first garden club.”

In the years that followed, from 1953 to 1960, she had three children — Bob Jr., Antonette and then Peter. As the children grew, “I did all the things that stay-at-home moms did. I was active with the League of Women Voters, the Girl Scouts, the Home and School Association, including making sure that the children of the working mothers were always included and always taken care of. I didn’t have to work but others did.”

As Bob was reassigned, the family moved accordingly, from New Haven to Scarsdale and then New Jersey. With the children older, “I was sitting in the kitchen one day with a friend and we were thinking what will we do now?  She said she always had wanted to go into real estate. I said I wasn’t interested but that I’d  go to real estate school with her because she and I did everything together.”

She became a broker, liking it far more than she had expected to, and with each successive family move she found a real estate office to work for.

But every summer, there was Shelter Island. Her father had a home on Winthrop Road and her mother-in-law had a home on Little Ram, which was where she stayed with her children. The kids grew up here every summer at the Ram Island house, taking swimming lessons on Louie’s Beach and sailing at the Yacht Club. “My children came to Shelter Island but I came with them to take care of them,” Jean said. “It wasn’t that the grandparents had the entire responsibility, which is what’s happening now, with so many working moms.”

After a stint in Connecticut, near Hartford, her husband was reassigned to Stony Brook. With her children grown and so much closer now to Shelter Island, she wanted to begin a real estate company on the Island and her husband encouraged her. “I actually came here to buy the Greg Price company,” she said, but when that deal fell through, she started a real estate office called Foxfire. When Bob retired in 1990, he joined her in that office.

In 1993, after 44 years of marriage, he died of cancer. “When Bob died, I didn’t want the expense of an office, so I decided to work for other people,” she recalled. She went to Griffing and Collins, then went to Allan Schneider and is now with Melina Wein.

Despite her work, it was hard to adjust to widowhood. Needing to “talk to someone,” she joined a bereavement group in East Hampton. That was the beginning of her relationship with East End Hospice, an organization dedicated to helping terminally ill individuals live their remaining days with care and dignity.

When two friends on the hospice board asked her to become a member, she accepted readily. “I’d never been on a board and I thought that it would be both interesting and worthwhile. I met all these wonderful, dedicated people,” she said. “If you’re invited to be on the board, you’re expected to do fundraising.” And she has been very involved with it, organizing cocktail parties, charity auctions and dinners. She organized a local committee on the Island and its members worked well together. “It was very rewarding and we made good money. I was very proud of that.” The committee, with some new members, is now planning next year’s main fundraising event at the Yacht Club.

These days, her major “extra-curricular” activity is the Garden Club of Shelter Island, which her mother-in-law introduced her to many years ago, and she’s been involved ever since.

She’s served as president for the past two years. “It’s a wonderful mix of local people and summer people,” she said. “Now there are other organizations here that are like that,” she said, but it was unusual in the 1960s when she first joined. “I didn’t want to be always labeled ‘a summer person,’” she said about the changing mix of the club.

She has participated every year in the club’s various shows and classes. She has a special affinity for Queen Anne’s lace. She plants her own and harvests the seeds, which she then spreads around. So Islanders, if you see this wildflower on the upswing as the years go by, you’ll know who to thank.