Jeanette Brenner

On Saturday, December 20th, 2025 an angel was called back from this realm to the next. Our beloved mother, Jeanette Brenner, passed just a couple months after her 92nd birthday. She joins in spirit her parents Cecelia and Harl Runnels, her sisters Dolores and Carol and other ancestors. She is survived by sister Mary, daughter Linda, sons Alan, Scott and Eric, grandson Gavin, granddaughter Sarah and great grandson Gene. Mother-in-law to Lara, Anne and Rick. Cousin, Aunt, Great Aunt, co-worker, and dear friend to many. She acquired the name, “Momsie” or “MomZ” by one of many of her children’s friends who found a second home in her presence on Arsenal St.

Jeanette started working early in her young adult life to help provide for her younger siblings and household. After a few attempts at marriage that ended in divorce, she raised a daughter and three young boys as a single parent renting a space in the state streets of St. Louis. Diligence and hard work at multiple jobs offered an opportunity to own her first and only home on the SW side of the city. Jeanette worked until retirement, full-time at the St. Louis Country Club as their bookkeeper then made time for Mary Kay, Avon, or Tupperware to make ends meet. She trusted in family and neighborhood sitters to help with her children while she worked.

Linda moved out and the three brothers learned to fend for themselves and become independent and resourceful. Though early years were financially challenging, the children had all they needed and their mother provided more than enough love, support and guidance. She was well-known for her tolerance and patience in raising three young boys who were free-range city kids growing up in the 70s & 80s finding community in a shared love of performing music.

Jeanette enrolled her youngest sons in Catholic school to provide some discipline and a stronger emphasis on education. Many neighborhood kids couldn’t wait to shed the constructs of their home life to have fun and make memories at the Brenner house. Alan started bringing stray musicians home who all became daily visitors and dear lifetime friends. Their mother allowed the noise and chaos to flourish under her roof because as she said “I always knew where they were”. There would be giant keg parties, daily jam sessions, wrestling matches and all sorts of mischief that she endured and enjoyed. Everyone was welcome in her home.

Jeanette encouraged her children to play and dream and shared that through hard work and passion, any path could be explored. Her sons all worked on some level at the St. Louis Country Club. When her youngest, Eric, decided to pursue a culinary career in the kitchen there, she supported the decision and said “you’ve got Moxie, you can do whatever you choose.” A few years later, he would open his first restaurant business and name it “Moxy”. Jeanette allowed the family home to be put up as collateral on the loans proving her unflinching belief in that endeavor.

Jeanette nourished her own artistic abilities and her watercolors and pastel works hung on the walls. She loved music and was always singing to her children or whistling along to music boxes that she would wind up as she readied herself for each day. She loved flowers and color, musicals on the TV, she always had perfect nails and hair. Fond memories recall her dancing and laughing, always pleasant, never offending, never showing her children the fear or uncertainty that she surely conquered daily with perseverance, faith, hope and love.

She gave the best hugs you could imagine: a soft, completely firm embrace that melted away all sense of fear or stress… in her arms one always felt safe and loved. Jeanette committed to be the person who kept up with the extended family and her community of friends and neighbors… always reporting news from near and far. For all those who knew her, she radiated kindness and strength of character.

Her advice was always simple yet profound... “just take it a day at a time, you’re right where you are meant to be, you will figure it all out and succeed as you always do.” That encouragement and positivity will live on in those whose spirit she filled. Her memory will live on and her presence felt in every sunny day, every change of season, random songs and scents, holiday celebrations… but most certainly in the kindness, love, tolerance and happiness that she instilled in everyone in her orbit.

Memorial visitation will be held Saturday, January 24, 2026, from 9am until services at 10:30 am at John L.  Ziegenhein & Sons, 7027 Gravois Ave.  Inurnment following services at Saints Peter & Paul Cemetery.