gardeninacity

As those of you who have been reading this blog over the last few years know, Jason has been sick with pancreatic cancer since the summer of 2020. With chemotherapy, the advance of the disease was slowed, but early this year it became clear that the chemo was no longer working as it had been, and Jason decided to begin home hospice care. This last weekend, early on Saturday morning, he passed away, surrounded by Judy and his sons, David and Daniel.

This blog was an important part of his life for more than a decade – a creative outlet, a community, a tribute to his love of gardening and sometimes a place to reflect on other things in his life, including family – and so we (his family) wanted to share a little bit more about him here.

Jason was born and raised just outside New York City on Long Island. He was the youngest of four siblings, and his parents, Paul and Barbara, exposed him to a love of gardening early. (He wrote a little bit about his father and his father’s garden here.) 

After high school, Jason briefly lived on a kibbutz in Israel. In addition to lots of valuable cultural exchange, this allowed him decades later to instruct his children on the best ways to load resistant, sharp-clawed turkeys into trucks for slaughter. This is one lesson his children have yet to put into practice.

After a few years in Queens, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, Jason moved to Chicago in Spring 1983 to work for DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America. He met Judy in August 1983 when they went to a conference together (assigned to the same vehicle, which happened to be a small stick-shift pick-up truck, which Judy barely knew how to drive; Jason had no driver’s license at the time). Before the end of a three hour drive from Chicago to Madison, sparks were flying (actually, before they reached the Belvidere oasis).

Jason had a keen sense of social justice, and was always active, both professionally and in his personal time, in fighting to protect the dignity and rights of all people. In Chicago, he worked for the Metropolitan Tenants Organization; then organized families of nursing home residents; worked as a paralegal for the eldercare program of Cook County Legal Assistance; and became Executive Director of the Illinois State Council of Senior Citizens Organizations (now the Illinois Alliance for Retired Americans). He liked fighting for the rights of senior citizens, but he hated fundraising and administration (he was worried about tax reports for ISCSCO for years after he left, although he had done them as well as he could), and was glad eventually to transition to the political affairs department of AARP. There, he worked in the Dakotas and Nebraska (though based in Chicago), which led to further cultural exchange, such as the time he tried to get a haircut in Pierre, South Dakota, and his barber (who was not familiar with curly Jewish hair) refused to believe he hadn’t had a perm. Later, he worked in Wisconsin, where he helped pass legislation creating a new program to reduce the cost of prescription drugs for seniors (before the Medicare Part D drug program was launched).

He spent the last two decades of his career at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFSCME Council 31, a union which represents 90,000 Illinois public and nonprofit employees. He masterminded victories for pro-labor candidates in important legislative and local government elections, and was a critical part of legislative lobbying efforts to raise wages for low-paid human services workers, especially those caring for people with developmental disabilities.

In his free time, of course, Jason loved to garden. It was the ultimate escape from lobbying in state capitols and fighting state and municipal bureaucracy to secure decent working conditions, and from the craziness that has overtaken our country in the last several years. Gardening brought him great satisfaction and joy (as well as the usual frustration of gardeners everywhere).

As readers here know, his love of gardens came as much from a sense of whimsy and simple appreciation for beautiful things as a love of working outdoors in the dirt and an appreciation for the scientific, historic, and cultural meaning of gardens and gardening. He was as likely to stop and appreciate a flower or wild grass in a park or on the side of a path as he was to spend hours flipping between garden catalogs and a sketchbook to fine-tune the next season’s plantings, or to make his way through stacks of books on the history of gardening in England or Japan, or the latest from Piet Oudolf. He kept Judy busy taking photos to document everything so that it could be shared with all of you.

And of course he loved to share his appreciation and knowledge. He did that here on his blog, with family and friends, and neighbors or anyone else who stopped by to admire his garden at home. He took writing this blog very seriously, and wanted to provide real information, along with a smile and a personal perspective. (We hear him over our shoulder telling us that this post is much too long; he would have broken it into two.)

Jason and Judy were both astonished and delighted by the number of good friends they made through mutual appreciation of gardens, through this blog, as well as people who stopped on the sidewalk to admire our garden, and people they met on Garden Blogger Flings and through the course of admiring other peoples’ gardens and public gardens. Even the hospice doctor who came to our house last week exclaimed that she had driven past our garden many times and loved it. 

You only have to read through this blog to see how much Jason loved plants and gardening. He talked to and communed with plants. He was always sneaking in an extra shrub (without letting Judy know), but he also planted many flowers because Judy admired them (hellebores and tulips among others) and most of them, he came to love – and Judy even came to love most of the shrubs.

Besides gardening, Jason applied his good humor and curiosity to a number of other subjects, including American and Russian history, geography, birding, and travel. (Here are some posts about travel to New York, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Russia, Turkey, and Japan.) In the last seven months of his life, he picked up a new interest: his granddaughter, Addie. He was particularly good at making her laugh with new “games” like using a blanket to cover her and then pulling it away.

Most importantly, Jason was a loving and supportive father, husband, and grandfather; friend and colleague. He instilled his values and love of learning in his children, and brought joy to many through his exuberant gardens and his writing. Thank you for being a part of the community he created here, and we hope you’ll stay as we continue to post occasional updates and photos of the garden and our family. As mentioned in an earlier post, we have hired a wonderful garden service, Vivant Gardens, to help maintain the garden.

For those who wish to make a donation in honor of Jason, we have two suggestions.

The labor movement and fighting for the rights and dignity of all workers, but especially low-wage workers, has been very important to Jason and his family. We know personally how important labor unions are. Jason was diagnosed with cancer at age 61, and was unable to continue working. Under many if not most circumstances, this would have been financially devastating. However, the union continued his health insurance for several years until he was eligible for Medicare, provided excellent disability insurance, and a defined benefit pension. In addition to how much we love all the colleagues Jason worked with, and who feel like family, we also appreciate the union movement as a whole. Every worker should have these benefits.

We have looked for a meaningful place for people to send donations in Jason’s memory. One of those we would like to recommend is Warehouse Workers for Justice, a workers center that organizes and fights for the rights of workers in distribution and logistics in Illinois. If you use Amazon or other online shipping companies but want to see the workers who make those deliveries possible receive the wages, safe working conditions and job security they deserve (or you don’t use those services because of the precarious nature of those jobs), WWJ is a great place to support. You can donate here. It doesn’t look like you can designate a donation in memory of someone through the online portal, so we would appreciate if you could drop a card to the PO Box below, or post in the comments, so that we can thank you properly.

Secondly, of course, we have a garden donation recommendation. Jason loved gardens far and wide, but he also really enjoyed the public parks right here in Chicago, such as the West Ridge Nature Center and Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary. In a few days, we’ll do a post about some of our recent visits to Montrose Point. We plan on collecting donations to the Chicago Parks Foundation, to be used to help pay for a memorial bench for Jason at Montrose Point and also support the programs and work of the Foundation. If you want to make this donation, we’re asking for checks to be made payable to “Chicago Parks Foundation” with “Jason Kay” in the memo line, and to be sent to:

Judy Hertz, 848 Dodge Ave, Box 348, Evanston, IL 60202

We’ll collect them and turn them in together, and arrange for a bench. We’ll post a photo when the bench is placed.

If you want to send a card to the family, Box 348 is also a good place, unless you have our home address.

Stay tuned, more to come — and we want to say again how much your participation in this blog conversation meant to Jason, and means to us.

Judy, Daniel and David