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A Windsor Woman of the Year who left her mark on local journalism, health care, and symphonic music is being remembered for her brilliance and grit.
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Mina Grossman-Ianni, former executive director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra with numerous accomplishments to her name, died on Monday. She was 78.
“I don’t think you’ll find a soul in Windsor that wouldn’t have high praise for her. She was quite the force to be dealt with,” brother Allen Grossman told the Star.
Born in Poland in 1943, Grossman-Ianni came to Canada in 1948. In 2006, she told then-Star reporter Marty Gervais she’d lived with thousands of other Jewish refugees in displaced persons camps at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, after the war .
Her long and distinguished career in Windsor began in the early 1970s when she arrived with her late husband, Ron Ianni, who became president of the University of Windsor.
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Grossman-Ianni was a broadcast journalist for radio and television, mainly with CBC and Radio-Canada. From 1985 to 1998, she was head of radio and television for the southwestern Ontario division of the French CBC. From 1995 to 1996, she was French CBC’s director of radio.
In 1998, the year after the death of husband Ron from Lou Gehrig’s disease, she joined the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, first as a board member, then as its executive director at a time of acute financial distress.
“Her involvement led to a turnaround of the orchestra,” said Sheila Wisdom, the symphony’s current executive director and a longtime friend of Grossman-Ianni. “Some of the lead sponsors who became friends of the WSO that long ago are still supporting the WSO today — they began their relationship with Mina. That’s an incredible legacy.”
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One word to describe Mina is “grit,” Wisdom said. “She had a tenacity about her. ‘No’ was not an acceptable answer to Mina, but people were happy to be in her circle and loved working with her.
“Many good things that have happened in this community have Mina’s fingerprints on them. She always found a way to make things happen.”
In 2005, Grossman-Ianni was named Windsor Woman of the Year.
The next year, she was nearly killed in an accident in Germany when a car T-boned the van she was traveling in. It resulted in her suffering a broken neck and other lasting health complications.
Despite medical challenges, she then served as chairperson for the Erie-St. Clair Local Health Integration Network.
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In 2014, she had surgery to try and correct an issue with a spinal fusion that followed the crash. During physiotherapy, she fell and fractured her neck.
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“She was a fighter, tough as nails and always has been, but at that point she just sort of resigned herself to the fact that she’s not going to be able to recover from this one, and she will have no life, really, to speak of.” Allen said.
She chose medical assistance in dying.
“She didn’t want people to know prior to it happening that she was going to do this, but she requested of me and others to… get the word out there that this is available.
“She was an independent, strong-willed, and pragmatic woman to the last moment. She went out the way she wanted, exactly.”
Grossman-Ianni is survived by brothers Allen and Jeffrey Grossman, as well as many nieces and nephews.
The Windsor Symphony Orchestra will dedicate concerts on March 12 and 13 to Grossman-Ianni’s memory. The shows will open with a special piece in honor of her de ella love of opera.