We are honored to celebrate the extraordinarily well-lived life of our beloved father, grandfather, great-grandfather, husband, uncle, and brother, Jerry Ratajczak Jurand, who peacefully left us, as he had wanted, on July 12 at age 103.
Mr. Jurand was a man with a real zest for life who approached life with a sense of adventure, opportunity, appreciation, humor, and fun. He also was an example of dogged determination, perseverance, and courage who valued education as an important path to success and loved knowledge.
He was a true renaissance man who possessed a remarkably broad range of knowledge, skills, and talents, and he valued development of capabilities to their fullest through education and cross-disciplinary curiosity.
Mr. Jurand was born in 1923 in Piaski, a small town in western Poland. After World War II broke out when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, he joined and fought for his homeland as a partisan in the Armia Krajowa, the Polish resistance Home Army. To protect his family in the event of capture, he changed his surname to Jurandowski, which was later shortened to Jurand upon him obtaining U.S. citizenship. It was the name he kept throughout his life in America.
Toward war’s end, as the Soviets were overrunning Poland from the east, he and some of his fellow partisan soldiers escaped through Czechoslovakia into West Germany. It was in West Germany where he completed dental school, obtaining his doctor of dental medicine degree, and served in the U.S. Army Dental Corps. This also is where he met and married his wife, Ruth, and where they had two children, Lydia and Robert.
After moving the family to the United States in 1956, they became U.S. citizens in 1961. Mr. Jurand joined an immunology research team at Roswell Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., where his third child, Darlene, was born. The family moved to Memphis, where Mr. Jurand began working in 1962 as an immunologist and cancer research scientist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Mr. Jurand obtained his doctor of dental surgery degree from the University of Tennessee College of Dentistry in 1965 while still working at St. Jude. He was then immediately appointed to the faculty as a professor of periodontics, where he taught full time and also was engaged in clinical research until his retirement in 2002. He maintained a general dental practice until 2011, when he was 88 years old.
He possessed an insatiable curiosity and lifelong desire to learn, question, and explore new fields of inquiry. During his busy professional career and throughout his life, Mr. Jurand found time to raise a family of three children, to travel around the world with his wife, Ruth, to go camping and sailing with his family, and to fly airplanes with his son.
In his later years, Mr. Jurand painted beautiful works of art, some of which were award-winning, and drafted his memoirs. He was active in the Polish Society in Memphis and sponsored his sister, niece, and nephew in their immigration to the United States from Poland and to become citizens. He traveled to Poland several times to visit relatives.
Mr. Jurand, whose life was an extraordinary journey, was an example to all to live each day to the fullest and partake in the extraordinary blessings life has to offer. He is preceded in death by his loving wife, Ruth. He leaves behind to cherish his memory his children, Lydia, Robert (Sabitra), and Darlene (Rob); granddaughter, Larissa; great grandchildren, Liam and Andrew; nieces, nephews, and cousins.
A memorial service for Mr. Jurand was held on July 27 at the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus columbarium followed by a reception at the Nursing Center at Little Creek in Knoxville.