Services Today for Longtime Educator Jean Blankenship

Services will be held today for Jean Blankenship, a longtime special education teacher who died of cancer Feb. 19. She was 63.

Mrs. Blankenship worked as a special education teacher for 20 years, 17 of them in the Fountain Valley School District, where she bettered the lives of those she taught, friends and family members said Thursday.

“This woman left an incredible legacy. . . ,” said Judy Caforio, a teacher at Urbain H. Plavan Elementary School, where Mrs. Blankenship taught. “Everybody was touched almost magically by this person, by her strength and her spirit.

“Everybody who is grieving for this woman feels that their life has really been changed because of her,” Caforio said. “She was more than an educator, an artist, and a friend. . . .”

Mrs. Blankenship died at her home.

Her daughter, Harvest Gulevich of Fountain Valley, said a scholarship that has been established in her mother’s name is a fitting tribute.

“My mother felt strongly about children and children’s right to have a safe and happy childhood,” she said. “She was an artistic person, always encouraging people to (create) art.”

Mrs. Blankenship’s husband, Marine Maj. Lee Blankenship, a helicopter pilot, was killed in 1969 during the Vietnam War.

Mrs. Blankenship went to college after her husband’s death and began teaching disabled children at Diamond Elementary School in Santa Ana in 1973. In 1977, she became a speech and language specialist in the Fountain Valley School District, spending the last nine years at Plavan Elementary.

In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Blankenship is survived by a sister, Mary A. Ritchie of Seattle; a niece, Connie J. Ritchie, also of Seattle, and two grandchildren, Sierra and Cody. Her son, David, died in 1982.

A memorial service will be held today at 3 p.m. at Pacific View Memorial Park, 3500 Pacific View Drive, Corona del Mar. Her ashes will be interred with her husband’s remains at Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery in Point Loma.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions be made to the Jean Blankenship Memorial Scholarship Fund, which will be given each year to an outstanding art student at Plavan Elementary.

Contributions to the scholarship may be sent to Urbain H. Plavan Elementary School, 9675 Warner Ave., Fountain Valley, Calif. 92708. Checks should be made out to Plavan Elementary PTO, Jean Blankenship Fund.