Jacqueline Pickering, 84, nurse, mom, yo-yo champ Dan Horn News•Lives Remembered Aug 22, 2012 MARIEMONT — Jacqueline Pickering was the kind of mom who read her kids “Green Eggs and Ham,” and then made them green eggs and ham for breakfast. She was the kind of grandma who bought her grandchildren yo-yos, and then showed them how to “Walk the Dog” and do other tricks she learned as a champion yo-yo competitor. She was the kind of friend who called when times were tough, and then followed up with more calls, notes, poems, hand-made hats and anything else she thought might help. “She was a very generous and giving person,” said her daughter, Karen Pickering, of Portland, Ore. “She was very outgoing. She knew everyone in the neighborhood.” Mrs. Pickering, a nurse, homemaker and longtime American Red Cross volunteer, died Aug. 15 at her home in Mariemont. She was 84. Her children say her dedication to friends and family was matched only by the passion and humor she brought to everything she did. When she taught classes for first-time moms in the 1960s, she made sure the dads showed up and learned how to put on the baby’s diaper, too. And when she sent a note to school with one of her four kids, she often did it with a fun, Dr. Seuss twist: “Brian told me so it must be true, this coming Friday two reports are due ... But listen to this mother’s cry. ‘Why so many? Why, oh why?’” Born in Detroit, Mrs. Pickering moved back to Toronto with her Canadian-born parents and grew up there. She went to nursing school with her twin sister, Josephine, and worked for five years as a nurse in Michigan. She met her husband, the late zoologist Quentin Pickering, in Ann Arbor and the couple later moved to Mariemont, where they raised their four children. Mrs. Pickering didn’t work full time after starting her family, but she stayed active. She volunteered for the Red Cross for 50 years, worked part-time as a nurse at the federal building downtown, played bridge, wrote poetry and became a prolific maker of Christmas stockings and “Cat in the Hat” hats, which, by her count, she gave to at least 97 friends and family members. She also was known to make green eggs and ham with the aid of some green food coloring, and to teach her nine grandchildren the yo-yo tricks she mastered as a childhood champ in Toronto. “No one could top grandma,” said her daughter Janice Pickering, of New Paltz, N.Y. “The kids would come back from visiting with red fingers from trying to keep up.” She stayed involved and connected to friends as she got older, too, meeting at least once a month with a group of friends she dubbed “the lunch bunch.” “She did the work to maintain the relationships,” Janice said. “And she wouldn’t disappear when things got rough. She stayed connected.” In addition to her daughters, survivors include two sons, Brian Pickering of Oakley and Bruce Pickering of Carmel, Ind.; a sister, JosephineYoung of Etowah, Tenn.; and a brother, Frank Clifton of Toronto. Services have been held.