Jeanne Rowe Skinner

On April 1, 1917, Skinner was born as Jeanne Dorothy Rowe in Marshalltown, Iowa. Skinner's father was George Lewis Rowe (1889-1975). Skinner's mother was Marie Henrietta (nee Franz) Rowe (1892-1977). Skinner had one sister, Virginia Robertson Rowe (1913-2009). In 1940, Skinner lived with her parents in Lancaster, Nebraska.[1][2][3]

Skinner earned a degree from University of Nebraska. Skinner was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and a member of Pi Lambda Theta honorary society.[1][2]

Skinner served as an officer (ensign and lieutenant) in Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), a woman's branch of the United States Navy Reserve. Skinner worked in the Public Relations division of the U.S. Navy Department in Washington, D.C. and in New York.[1][2]

In 1949, when Carlton Skinner was appointed by President Harry S. Truman as the Governor of Guam, Skinner became the First Lady of Guam on September 17, 1949, until April 22, 1953.[4]

On May 1, 1943, Skinner married Carlton Skinner at the home of Mr. & Mrs. Harvison Catlin Holland, her sister and brother-in-law, in Dayton, Ohio. They had three children, Franz, Andrea, and Barbara. They also had a Dalmatian named Lilu’okalani. [1][4][5][6]

In 1943, Skinner and her husband lived in an apartment on Twentieth Street in Washington D.C.[1] In 1949, Skinner and her family moved Guam.[4] In the 1950s to 1960s, Skinner lived in Belvedere, California.

After Skinner's divorce, in 1967, her ex-husband married Solange Petit, a French anthropologist.[4]

Skinner died on April 19, 1988, at the Veteran Medical Center in Palo Alto, California; she is interred at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.[2][7]

• Margaret Chung, a member of Navy's Women's Advisory Council which pushed Public Law 689

• Carlton Skinner Here Next Week En Route to Guam Governorship
• Newspaper of Evening Star, May 2, 1943, Page 52
• 80-G-43425: Ensign Jeanne R. Skinner, USNR, October 1943 at navy.mil