Bruce Springsteen superfan Jeanne Heintz was hoping for one more dance with the Boss, but her daughter said she’d have to settle for dancing in heaven.
Jeanne died Friday at St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul, Minn. She was 95.
“Besides her family and her grandkids, her second life was traveling around the country, going to Bruce Springsteen concerts,” said Jackie Heintz, the youngest of Jeanne’s four children.
Jeanne’s third and last on-stage dance with Springsteen was a short whirl to “Dancing in the Dark” during his Feb. 29, 2016, show in St. Paul.
“We had a ball. It was beautiful,” Jeanne told a Pioneer Press reporter at the time. “I was thrilled to death. Every time I went up there I was thrilled to death.”
Jeanne, whose nicknames were Beanie, Mean Jeanne and Hurricane Jeanne, was born in St. Paul on Nov. 8, 1924. She was one of 11 children — 10 girls and one boy.
“She was the last matriarch of our family’s Greatest Generation,” Jackie said. “Mom outlived them all.”
Jeanne married Frank Heintz in 1944. They had four children — Frank Jr., Pat, Greg and Jackie. Frank Sr. died in 1997, having been married to Jeanne for 53 years.
Mostly a stay-at-home mom, Jeanne also helped out at her family’s farm in Battle Creek and was a part-time waitress for 20 years at a restaurant called Phil’s Place.
At age 65 she went back to school to become a trained medication aide and at 80 worked in the dining room of Little Sisters of the Poor on Exchange Street.
“She didn’t want to retire,” Jackie said. “She was a go-getter.”
Her Springsteen passion began when she was in her mid-50s and Jackie brought home the album “Darkness at the Edge of Town.”
“I would come home from school and my mom would be playing records on the RCA record player,” Jackie said. “She would be dancing in the living room. My dad would yell at me, thinking I was the one playing the music. I’d say, ‘No, Dad, it’s not me. It’s Mom.’”
Jeanne began following her new idol on his U.S. tours — though never overseas because she was afraid of flying over water.
She and her daughter would fly in just for the concerts, often sleeping in the airport instead of getting a hotel.
Jeanne would get to the concert early so she could stand outside and listen to the soundcheck and greet the E Street Band, whose members called her “Mama.” She formed a close friendship with Clarence Clemons, the saxophone player. When he died in 2011, Jeanne was invited to his funeral.
“She was devastated by the loss,” Jackie said.
Jeanne also got to know Springsteen’s mother, Adele, who found it touching that someone the same age as she was a superfan of her son, Jackie said.
Springsteen first invited Jeanne up to dance Sept. 20, 2009, in Des Moines, Iowa. She made a sign to get his attention that said, “Bruce, I drove all night to dance with you,” which mimicked a line from Springsteen’s song “Drive All Night”: “I swear I’ll drive all night just to buy you some shoes.”
Two months later, she celebrated her 84th birthday at a Springsteen concert in Madison Square Garden.
She got to dance twice more with him, at his St. Paul shows in 2012 and in 2016.
When asked in 2016 how she found the stamina to make it through a three-hour concert, she said, “I could make it through (anything with Springsteen),” she said. “It could have lasted forever.”
Jeanne attended more than 300 of his concerts.
Her wake will be March 9 and her funeral Mass the following day. “Everyone is encouraged to wear pink, black or their Springsteen concert shirts,” Jackie said.