Janet S. May, a homemaker who ran an accessories business, dies

Jun 25, 2023

Janet S. May, a homemaker who helped run a business selling costume jewelry, gifts and stationery, died of pulmonary fibrosis July 7 at the Blakehurst Retirement Community in Towson. The former longtime Owings Mills resident was 98.

“Jan was beautiful, had impeccable taste and a gigantic heart,” said Dr. William F. Fritz, a retired Baltimore internist and longtime friend. “She appreciated beauty in all forms. She particularly loved flowers, and her living room was always replete with fresh arrangements.”

Said Liza Jarrett, a longtime family friend: “She was such an awesome lady. She was fun, charming, lovely and always very much on her game. She was beautiful, engaging and a really cool lady.”

Janet Stearns, daughter of James P. Stearns, a banker, and Esther Fennessy Stearns, a homemaker, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, and raised in Cohasset, Massachusetts, south of Boston.

She was a graduate of the Derby Academy in Hingham, Massachusetts, and the Milton Academy, a high school in Milton, Massachusetts.

She was married in the 1940s to Roger Lee, and after the marriage ended in divorce in the mid-1950s, she moved to New York City, where she worked as a business secretary.

In 1960, while attending the Hunt Ball at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, she met and fell in love with Herbert A. May Jr.

The couple were married in 1961 at Hillwood, the Washington, D.C., home of Marjorie Merriweather Post May, the American businesswoman and socialite, and Herbert Arthur May Sr., senior vice president of the Westinghouse Air Brake Co.

Dr. Jack McKay Zimmerman was the chief of surgery at Church and Home Hospital who brought hospice care to Baltimore. (handout)

The couple settled into a home on Golf Course Road in Owings Mills and embraced life in the Green Spring Valley.

Mr. May, who was a co-founder of Maryland Industries, a holding company, died in 1969.

After her husband’s death, Mrs. May remained in her Owings Mills home, where she raised her children.

“My mother was the strongest and most elegant woman I’ve ever known,” said her son, Herbert A. May III of Palm Beach, Florida. “I was 5 when my dad died and she raised us. She was both mom and dad. She treated all with love, and she loved her house to be filled with tons of people, especially kids.”

In the late 1970s, Mrs. May and Teddie Blue and Tessa Davis established Three Gems, a small business that sold costume jewelry, gifts and stationery, at shows up and down the East Coast.

“Her daughter, Lisa, and I were teenagers, and we’d go to events like at a hotel in Washington, where we modeled the jewelry that they sold,” Ms. Jarrett said. “They initially worked out of their homes, and then they started doing trunk shows around the country.”

The three women continued operating Three Gems into the 1990s, said Mrs. May’s daughter, Elizabeth ”Lisa” May, of Belmont, Massachusetts.

Earlier in her life, Mrs. May was a competitive golfer tennis player, and a “much-sought-after partner on the dance floor.”

In 2007, she moved to the Towson retirement community.

“The staff at Blakehurst were devoted to her, and they couldn’t pass her door without popping in and saying hello. It was a daily flow,” her son said. “It’s a great validation of a life well lived.”

“She was very outgoing and everyone at Blakehurst adored her,” Ms. Jarrett said. “She really was the Matriarch of Blakehurst.”

“She was inexhaustible to the end. Her door was literally always open to a constant stream of friends and admirers,” her daughter wrote in a biographical profile of her mother.

[ Eric Webber, Baltimore County physical education teacher, dies ]

Mrs. May took joy in her children and grandchildren, and never missed a play, performance, Little League game or tennis match.

“Near the end of her life, she followed her granddaughter’s progress in the New York City Marathon step by step on her iPad,” her daughter wrote.

As she had been on the tennis and golf course, Mrs. May was a keen competitor at the bridge table.

“She only stopped winning and playing bridge three weeks before her death,” Ms. May said in a telephone interview.

“She had a bright mind and was a brilliant bridge player, which, in later years, she played almost daily,” Dr. Fritz said.

Mrs. May was also an accomplished watercolorist and enjoyed travel.

Dr. Fritz described her as a “gourmet cook and a flawless hostess and a compassionate, generous, caring friend who enriched every life she touched.”

He added: “Truman Capote is alleged to have said this about one of his doyennes: ‘She had only one flaw. She was perfect; otherwise, she was perfect.’ That was Jan.”

Her son said, “She lived a full life and had no regrets.”

She had been a member of the Green Spring Valley Hunt Club.

Mrs. May was also a longtime communicant of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church in Owings Mills.

Plans for a memorial service to be held at Blakehurst in September are incomplete.

In addition to her two children, Mrs. May is survived by four grandchildren.