More photos below the remembrance.

Jennifer Jo Grondahl, September 20, 1971 – April 20, 2025, or as her dad Orv used to say, Jenny Jo Squirrel. Jenny was so important in my life and the kind of person that SHOULD BE celebrated in this world. She made my life and 1,000s of people better and fuller.

But to add a little additional note to how she affected me creatively. Jenny was the kind of person who when she loved you and believed in you, championed you. She was a fan. Of course, she had her favorites among my work, but I can’t remember anything but encouragement.

I was new to Los Angeles when I met her, and really trying to master a new medium (screenwriting) while still continuing working on my plays. Professionally, it was a very lonely place to be. It’s a damn brutal profession to pursue and I needed someone who believed me.

(Of course, one also needs the more critical eyes too, and my wife Judy is a crucial voice in that role, but at that point in time – 2000 to 2005, when I had no one who believed in me, Jenny was crucial in my keep on keeping on.)

By the way, the script I’m referring to below with the Caravaggio connection is “Pray with a Bullet”.

So without further ado, my original May 6, 2025 Facebook post:

I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook, so it’s easy for me to miss a post. An important post.

Today, I found out that a beautiful soul, my ex-wife Jenny Grondahl, and more importantly my continued friend these past 25 years, had passed away just over two weeks ago, on Easter morning, in Kansas. Her brother Brian had made the post (that was re-posted) on her page.

She was diagnosed with a rare cancer called Synovial Sarcoma in mid-March of 2024. She had been through the wringer this past year, and most recently took another down turn about 2 months ago, but I took refuge in denial that a miracle could still happen, so this news took me by surprise. I had to hold my grief together because I was at work, but I feel quite devastated by the news and I feel quite awful that I never got a chance to say good-bye to her.

Jenny was kind, honest, smart, creative, fun, playful and positive. She could talk to anybody, be it one on one, or on stage before a crowd.
“Hugs for everybody” was one of her favorite phrases, when of course, she wanted a hug.

She was fiercely loyal to friends and family.

She was fiercely dedicated to her work with different unions, especially LIUNA 777.

She literally made life better for thousands of people through her decades of work as a union organizer, negotiating contracts for better pay and benefits and as a union rep where she represented members in hearings and arbitrations.

If her life had taken a different path, she told me she wanted to be a costume designer, and her homes always had an excellent aesthetic. Like her father Orv and brother Brian, she was very artistic and was constantly drawing.

She had a profound love for the artist Caravaggio. I had always been more of a post-1860 kind of guy in my artistic taste, but her passion made me appreciate the Renaissance and Baroque. So much so, that I ended integrating Caravaggio paintings into one of the screenplays I wrote.

When she still lived in Orange County, I saw her regularly when I would go meet her and her second husband Hubert for Vietnamese food or to see the Yankees play the Angels. (Jenny, though a Kansas girl, was also a Yankee fan like me, because her grandfather had pitched for the Yankees in their minor leagues.

Over the last few years, our relationship was mostly via email as she was living in San Diego, Arizona and finally, Kansas again. One of us would see an article about something we thought the other would be interested in and send it to each other. In 2018, I told her about a Monkees reunion concert in downtown LA.

Though Jenny was too young to know the Monkees from their TV show, it was the first concert she saw when she was 14 and she was big fan. I liked them because my older brother Joe had one of their records and I raided his record collection all the time. We met for Mexican food and then the concert.

Later, she attended my Zoom readings that I did during the Pandemic. I treasure that I have a recording of her voice after one play ended where you can clearly hear saying how much she loved it.

And though we weren’t meant to be romantic partners, I will always love her, and the world is so so much emptier without her.

Deep condolences to her brother Brian, sister-in-law Angela and her 3 nephews.

(p.s. as part of Brian’s post about a celebration of life for Jenny in Kansas, in lieu of flowers, make donations to https://synovialsarcoma.org/)