Jean Normandy, an instructor in the Wagner English department from 1963 to 1982, died on April 6, 2013, at the age of 96, in Bridgewater, Virginia.
Born in Italy, raised in Staten Island, Normandy dropped out of school during the Great Depression to work in the garment industry. During World War II, she performed in theater groups on Broadway as well as abroad for the U.S. Army. While working in sales at a high-end department store after the war, she returned to the classroom, earning her high school degree in night school and continuing at Wagner College. She received her bachelor’s in English in 1961 and her master’s in 1963. She especially loved Renaissance literature as well as the works of Shakespeare and Milton, and retired as a professor emerita in 1982.
