Hudson, MA – Jean Louise (Senstad) Dickinson joined her beloved husband Charlie (d. March 2022) on May 20, 2025. She died peacefully in her apartment in Hudson, MA with daughter Anne and son Dick by her side – a couple of weeks shy of her 100th birthday.
Jean was born and raised in Thief River Falls. The proud daughter of a Soo Line brakeman turned County Auditor, she graduated valedictorian from Lincoln High School in 1943 and was very active in band, choir, class government, class plays, Lincoln Log, and National Honor Society. Jean enrolled at the University of Minnesota and received a B.S. in Textiles in 1947. She returned to her studies two decades later, receiving an M.A. in Religion (1969) at Andover Newton Theological School in Massachusetts.
Jean met Charles A. Dickinson at the University of Minnesota in 1946, and they were married in 1947. In 1949 after Charlie’s graduation, they embarked on a six-week bicycling adventure in post-war Europe. With no formal itinerary, the couple traveled through England, France, Switzerland and Italy making it up as they went, much of the time camping by the roadside. This foretold a life of adventure in moving throughout the USA and seeing where life would take them.
In 1950 they began their family, and Jean took on the profession she was most proud of, that of Homemaker and Mom. As Charlie’s career took on new roles Jean made houses into homes, in Indiana, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Minnesota, California, Oklahoma, Vermont, and France.
In the midst of all of this moving, her self-professed greatest achievement was raising five children. Jean and Charlie instilled a strong sense of independence, responsibility, and confidence in all five. Jean taught them a little business, budgeting, and baking when each reached the age of seven, through baking and selling cookies in the neighborhood as a way to raise money to buy their own bicycles. She always stressed the value of education but did not constrain her children’s lives, rather encouraging interesting and diverse trajectories for each of them –a point of great pride and accomplishment.
Wherever she lived, Jean did volunteer work in the community. In Indiana, it was The League of Women Voters, and in Massachusetts, it was teaching sewing and knitting in inner-city Boston. In Minnesota, she led the creation of visiting room services (People Enabling People) including childcare at the state prison in Stillwater, welcoming spouses of prisoners to visit more often.
In her last years, Jean seemed most proud of her prison project among her many volunteering accomplishments. In Los Angeles, CA she helped form a branch of the Retired Seniors Volunteer Program (RSVP); in Palo Alto, CA she wrote a practical guidebook for relocating based on her experience of transplanting her family’s home around the country; in Oklahoma, she worked on a Congressional campaign; and in Vermont, she volunteered at the regional hospital.
Jean and Charlie finally settled in an old farmhouse on 40 acres in Williamstown, VT in 1985, staying there, with a two-year interlude in Gradignan, France while Charlie was working there. In late 2018, they moved to live near Anne in Massachusetts.
Throughout it all, Jean’s abiding passion was working with natural fiber textiles. All her life she sewed and knitted for herself and her family –skills that her mother taught her. Her hand-sewn wardrobe was always stylish and unique, and widely admired. Jean’s knitting skills at a young age won her top prize at the county fair. Her knitting needles and yarn were omnipresent as she outfitted her family and many friends with sweaters, caps, and mittens, and all of the nieces, nephews, and grandchildren received her elaborate hand-knit Christmas stockings with their name and birth year. In Vermont, Jean concentrated on weaving and attended the Marshfield School of Weaving. She became skilled at weaving shawls, blankets, rugs, wall art, and tweeds for tailored sports coats.
Jean also took up writing in Vermont, completing three books including a memoir of her early childhood and another about their 1949 European bike trip. Her book of humorous poetry called “The Mythical Adventures of the Cow and the Horse” expanded on a talent exhibited by Jean and Charlie in their famous annual Christmas letters in verse that were sent out faithfully for more than 70 years along with Advent calendars for the children in her life. She also published a journal article on knitting techniques.
Jean never forgot her Thief River Falls roots returning often to visit. She worked on the “Save the Depot!” campaign in 1994–1995 to renovate the old Soo Line Depot; and wrote the memoir “A Child’s View” about her childhood in Thief River Falls in 1929. Jean donated copies of the book to the third graders of Challenger Elementary School and was even able to visit and read it with them occasionally.
Jean loved traveling and encouraged others to travel and learn about the world. One year she took a month-long solo bus trip across the US, visiting family and the friends she made in the many communities where she lived. She often accompanied Charlie on business trips to Mexico, Asia, Europe and took tourist trips to Russia, the Far East, Argentina and Europe, including several trips to her ancestral Norwegian homeland. She and Anne went on multiple travel adventures together. On a trip to Russia in association with a nonprofit started by her son Tom, Jean was the resource on American-style volunteering.
In her final months, she was cared for with compassion and love by the staff at the Artisan in Hudson Senior Living Center, the staff of Ascend Hospice, and especially by her daughter Anne, who steadfastly cared for both Jean and Charlie in their later years.
In addition to her husband, Charlie, Jean was preceded in death by her father, Arthur (1951); mother, Louise (1939); brother, Paul (1971); and sister, Ruth Anne (1992).
She is survived by her children, Peter (Louise), Joe (Karen), Dick (Cheri), Tom, and Anne; four grandchildren, Patrick (Jillian), Lena (Dave), Dan (Vidthya), and Allison (Evan); and three great-grandchildren, Dominic, Charlie, and Robbie.
Until the end, she kept her wonderful, dry sense of humor, her gratitude and her kindness. Jean led a full and fruitful life of accomplishment and adventure with both family and community. She will be sorely missed but never forgotten.
Jean and Charlie’s ashes will be interred with her parents in Greenwood Cemetery, Thief River Falls. If you would like to honor Jean with a memorial, please consider contributing to the Jean L. and Charles A. Dickinson Scholarship at the University of Minnesota https://makingagift.umn.edu/give/yourgift.html?&cart=25817, or to The Thief River Falls Education Foundation https://www.trfeducationfoundation.com/donations/give-a-gift, or to The Greater Boston Food Bank https://my.gbfb.org, or to your favorite charity.
If you are a coffee lover as Jean was, enjoy a cup of hot black coffee and when you see a field of brown-eyed susans (her very favorite flower) or just one, know that she is smiling down on you with a twinkle in her eye.
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