Sarah Jane Chase

Sarah Jane Chase died in her dream home the evening of July 10, 2026, after a long illness.

Like her grandparents, who raised her and her brother Sonny and sister Debbie in addition to their own children, and the children of relatives, Sarah raised multiple sets of children. With her first husband, Theodore Alexander, she had her first two children, Theodore III and Renee (Christopher Volkers), and then, 10 years later, Sean, raised with her second husband, Nicholas Chase. Then just a few weeks before Sean’s 18th birthday (they were THIS close), Cheyenne and Dakota, the children of Sarah’s friend Lynne, came into her life. She is also survived by Renee’s children, Jessica (mother of Cameron), Nicole (mother of Liam and Keith), Christopher Jr, and Taylor; Sean’s children, Lilly and Gabriel, and Cheyenne’s children, Aiden, KieraLynne, and Brandon.

When somebody dies, it’s traditional to lament the things they never got to do, but I’m afraid we’re not going to have much opportunity to do that in this case, because Sarah took a bigger bite out of life than most classrooms of people. She started out as a nun, though that was when she was a teenager and NOT at the age of three when she’d originally put a towel on her head and run away to the convent.

After four years, she left the convent because she was ill and didn’t want other people to do her work for her. From there, she worked in radio, television, and theater, to the point at which we couldn’t watch TV for more than an hour without seeing someone she’d worked with, or at least met and talked to. Once a friend commented that he wanted to go somewhere to eat where nobody knew her, and her sister Debbie noted that they’d have to leave town.

For many years she was deeply involved with her Irish heritage, especially the Irish folk music scene. She was particularly close to Irish music legend Liam Clancy and his partner Tommy Makem, and in later years, she was fortunate enough to spend time with their sons Donal and Rory. She also finally made that trip to Ireland she always wanted to take.

She attended and ran many science fiction conventions, especially around Doctor Who, being called “my American Sarah Jane” by the actual producer of the show at the time. Later, she was the publisher of Scifi Imaginarium, a science fiction newsmagazine that at its height during the pandemic reached a circulation of more than 65 million views per month.

She was particularly proud of her medical background, spending several years as the second in command and the main voice of the Cleveland Poison Control Center, saving many lives and also using her skills to help many family members age in place.

She was a driving force behind two books about Euclid Beach Park, where she spent a lot of her childhood, and where she made a name for herself as the girl who rode the Flying Turns bobsled ride with her roller skates, then topped it by riding her bicycle on the 71-foot-high Thriller roller coaster. (She always said it was all about centrifugal force.)

Undoubtedly, nobody who knew her as a child was surprised by that. She would be the first person to tell you that she was not stubborn, just determined. When she was a child, her grandfather said he would get her a horse if she could learn to ride the mule, and she did it. And if that sounds strange, honestly, the girl who rode the mule never did anything “normal” in her life. Perhaps the most accurate thing anybody ever said to her was when she and some friends were helping out with fundraising for the local PBS station and a stranger pointed to her friend and said, “You’re weird.” She pointed to a second friend and said, “You’re weirder.” Then she pointed to Sarah and said, “But you are, without a doubt, the weirdest.”

When she started to get sick, she had literally dozens of strokes, but we didn’t realize it because she never had any classical stroke symptoms. Even at the very end, we thought she was gone at least half a dozen times, to the point where we were pretty sure she was in the corner laughing with her sisters, saying “Watch this.”

And she was undoubtedly happy to be back with her departed family, whom she dearly missed.

As you might suspect, she didn’t have too many regrets about things she didn’t get to do. Always a religious and spiritual person, the one thing she was sorry about is that she would miss the last two seasons of The Chosen, about Jesus and his disciples. But now she’s got the real thing, and if she puts in a good word for the rest of us. G-d certainly won’t be able to ignore her.

Family and friends are welcome on Thursday, July 16, 2026, from 6 to 8 PM at Slone & Co. Life Celebration Center, 3556 West 130th Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44111. Graveside Services and Interment will be held Friday, July 17, 2026, at All Souls Cemetery, 10366 Chardon Road, Chardon, Ohio 44024, TIME TO BE ANNOUNCED.