After many years of raising children, driving a school bus and working as a cashier, Ann Brand channeled her energies into helping others, making friends and having fun.

Newly retired from Discount Drug Mart in Westlake in 1998, she began volunteering and participating in activities at the North Ridgeville Senior Center.

“She came in on Mondays and worked with our craft ladies,” said Rita Price, director of the center. “Wednesdays, she helped set tables for lunch and played cards and bingo. Fridays, she helped serve lunch for Rotarians.

“At least four out of the last six years, she was one of the top volunteers in hours she gave us. Everyone here who knew Ann just loved her.”

More photos below.

The Avon resident, who died Jan. 16, 2010, at age 85, also participated in early morning exercise classes, helped prepare packages for Meals-on-Wheels and tended the seniors’ booth at craft shows.

“She volunteered to help with everything,” said Theresa Oswald, a fellow volunteer. “Like quilting. Something she had never done. She didn’t know how, but she was willing to try everything.”

Around two years ago, Ann started volunteering at the Love-A-Stray cat shelter in Avon Lake. She spent hours playing with the cats and crocheting little blankets for them.

She was born Anna Ivka in Cleveland on Feb. 13, 1924, the daughter of Croatian immigrants, but preferred to be called “Ann.”

The Dash Between: About this feature

The dates of birth and death that appear like bookends on a tombstone do not matter as much as the dash between those dates: The life that a person lived. Alana Baranick The Dash Between is an obituary feature written by Alana Baranick about regular folks from Lorain County and adjacent areas. Baranick wrote her first obit in 1985 when she was a reporter for The Chronicle. She wrote obituaries for Cleveland’s Plain Dealer from 1992 through 2008. "Life on the Death Beat" She is the chief author of “Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers” and director of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers. She won the 2005 American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award in the Obituary category. Today, Alana Baranick examines The Dash Between on Feb. 13, 1924, when Ann Brand was born in Cleveland, and Jan. 16, 2010, when the retired Avon school bus driver and Westlake Discount Drug Mart cashier died at St. John Westshore Hospital in Westlake. The Dash Between is scheduled to appear in The Chronicle every other Sunday. To suggest a story or make a comment, contact Baranick at abaranick@chroniclet.com. Read more of The Dash Between: Leticia Chavez Fischer Marilyn Exline Craig Behrend Sylvester Cooper Bernie O’Donnell Ray Church Tom Kuns Ann Brand Maggie Terry Rose Broske Lenore Eastin Wayman Carol Fankhauser Patricia Mason Beattie Micah Black Abe Assily Velva Mihalis Tippie Moon Dr. D.C. Patel Bernie and Virginia Schlather Dixie Slaughenhaupt Barb Baldwin Eva Mae Pugh

Her mother had come to America with her first husband, who died during the flu epidemic of 1918, leaving her to raise their only son, John Mikulic, alone.

Ann’s mother later met and married a fellow immigrant with whom she had two more children: Ann and her younger brother, Paul Ivka.

Ann spent her childhood in an ethnic enclave in Cleveland’s Buckeye Road area.

When she was 14, her father took a job at a Lorain steel mill and moved the family moved to a farm in Avon.

Ann attended Avon High School, but quit school during her junior year. She soon began working for her older brother, wrapping butter for his mom-and-pop store and making box lunches to sell to workers outside factories in Cleveland.

She worked in quality control at National Tool Co. in Cleveland during World War II. After the war, Ann became a seamstress for Richman Brothers clothing company.

Ann met Jacob Brand at Aragon Ballroom. They were married Feb. 8, 1947. The newlyweds began married life in the converted attic of Jacob’s parents’ house on a tiny street near the Cleveland Zoo.

In 1958, the couple and their first four children moved into a house they had built on Ann’s parents’ farmland. Their fifth and youngest child was born later.

Jacob, who worked as a radio and television repairman, landed a job in electronics at the NASA research center in Brook Park in the early 1960s.

Also in the ’60s, Ann worked part time as a cook, making pizzas at the Tropicana tavern in Avon Lake.

In 1969, she began driving a bus for the Avon schools. She sometimes acted in ways that thrilled her young passengers but irritated her superiors.

She famously indulged one youngster who wanted to jump onto a slow-moving bus. Other kids talked her into letting them use the emergency exit.

Ann was known to drive so fast over big bumps in the road that kids would fly off their seats. She allowed youngsters have snowball fights on the bus.

“I think she had high tolerance for that because she had five kids at home,” her daughter Janet said. “I think she always liked the commotion. She loved it when everybody was at the house.”

Ann’s youngest child was 13, when Jacob died of lung cancer at age 52 in 1974. While still driving bus, the widow took a part-time job as a cashier at Drug Mart.

“She was always willing to go somewhere and do something different,” said Drug Mart co-worker Ada Chichester. “At weddings, she would dance the entire night.”

Ann, who loved line dancing in her later years, tried her hand — and feet — at the various dance crazes of her children’s generation.

“I remember her doing a really good Funky Chicken,” Janet said.

When Ann was in her 50s, she went to a celebration at a Cleveland nightclub with her youngest daughter, Caroline Stanczyk.

“All the guys were hitting on her,” Caroline said. “She was drinking champagne and dancing with these young guys.”

Ann was an outstanding league bowler in her 50s, went cross-country skiing at 60, went tobogganing on the ice chutes at Mill Stream Reservation in Strongsville in her 70s and played kickball with her grandchildren into her 80s.

She liked to have fun but also had a serious side. She taught her kids the importance of a having strong work ethic and maintaining a close-knit family.

Whenever her kids argued, she told them, “You know, someday you kids are only going to have each other, and you’d better learn how to get along.”

Contact Alana Baranick at (216) 862-2617 or abaranick@chroniclet.com.

---

Print this story
Report an inappropriate comment

---

In order to comment, you must agree to our user agreement and discussion guidelines.
You must be registered and logged in to post a comment. If you aren't already registered, click here.
If you are registered, click here to log in.
Need help? Email Us.