Sayville Alumni Associations ENDLESS WAVES short biography series presents;

Janice Marie Blazek

Class of 1955

A quiet life in Bohemia, Brooklyn and Fort Myers — and a gift no one saw coming

Born September 9, 1937  ·  Died January 2026

The Sayville Alumni Association’s remarkable historian, Erick Baumeister, has recently discovered an incredible connection between a quiet Sayville High School graduate and a stunning act of generosity in Florida.

Her name was Janice Blazek. She graduated with the Class of 1955, and when she died in January 2026 at the age of 88, she left $2 million each to two Southwest Florida organizations whose staff had never met her—$4 million in all. Her neighbors were stunned. So was her attorney of several decades. So, for that matter, were the recipients.

Nobody, it seems, can say where the money came from. But thanks to the archives, we can tell you a little about where Janice came from.

From Bohemia to the Senior Portrait

Janice Marie Blazek was born on September 9, 1937, at Southside Hospital, the daughter of Gustav and Olga (Kroutil) Blazek. The Mid-Island Mail announced her arrival on September 15 and listed the family’s address as Sycamore Avenue.

Janice’s birth notice in The Mid-Island Mail, September 15, 1937.

She grew up right here in Bohemia, and the local newspaper kept an eye on her. In June 1945, the Suffolk County News listed her among the Bohemia Public School students whose report cards showed marks of 90 percent or better—right alongside her older brother, Gustav. Our archives find her again in 1947 as a fourth-grader, and in the 1955 Sayville High School yearbook, her senior portrait shows a young woman ready to take on the world. Little did anyone know then how profoundly she would one day affect it—and completely in secret.

The Blazek Family

Janice came from a Long Island family with deep local roots. Her father, Gustav Blazek, was born January 7, 1905, in Manhattan. A machinist for Grumman Aircraft, he was a life member of Sayville’s own Connetquot Masonic Lodge No. 838. Her mother, Olga (Kroutil) Blazek, was born December 27, 1907, in New York. Married some 57 years, the couple moved to Inverness, Florida, around 1973. Olga died there on July 11, 1985, at 77; Gustav followed on February 1, 1986, at 81. Both were cremated. When her father died, Janice was living in Brooklyn—the city she would call home for decades.

Janice had one sibling, her older brother Gustav Blazek Jr., a veteran, born July 5, 1931, in Bohemia. He died April 12, 2018, in Stony Brook at the age of 86. His story is also told in our Endless Waves section.

A third generation shared the household as well. Janice’s maternal grandmother, Mary Kroutil, a native of Czechoslovakia and the widow of Frank Kroutil, made her home with the Blazeks on Sycamore Avenue. When she died in November 1958 at the South Shore Convalescent Home in Patchogue, the Suffolk County News noted her membership in Lodge Bevin No. 11, J.C.D. & P., of New York. Services were held at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Bohemia, with burial in the family plot at Union Cemetery. Besides her daughter Olga, she was survived by another daughter, Mrs. Berta Giblin of Miami; two grandchildren; a great-grandchild; and a brother, Joseph Spevak of New York City.

A Life Under the Radar

The details of Janice’s later years come from a June 2026 report by Sheldon Zoldan for WGCU News, which we encourage you to read in full.

After leaving Long Island, Janice made her life in Brooklyn, and from the mid-1970s she lived there with Milton Landau, her longtime companion. Around 2000 the two moved to Fort Myers, Florida. Milton died in 2022 at the age of 95, and Janice carried on exactly as before: quietly.

For 23 years she lived in the same modest two-bedroom apartment near the Bell Tower Shops, one of sixteen units in a gray-and-white cement-block building in a rental community where rents start around $1,500 a month. Her neighbors knew a petite woman—not quite five feet tall and barely 100 pounds—who walked constantly, day and night, drove a Honda, and politely declined help carrying her groceries. She never married, had no children and no pets, and never owned a home. Most conversations went no further than “Hello, how are you?”

“Some millionaires are humble.”   — neighbor Loren Merrigan

Milton Landau

Milton A. Landau is the only name anyone has been able to attach to Janice’s adult life, and he is nearly as much of a mystery as she is. The shared bronze marker at Fort Myers Memorial Gardens gives his years as 1927 to 2022, and press accounts put his age at death at 95—about a decade older than Janice.

No marriage license has turned up, though neighbors assumed the two were husband and wife. Those same neighbors remembered Milton as a man who used a walker, and that Janice looked after him patiently for years, helping him up and down the stairs to their second-floor apartment. Her 2015 will named him as her sole heir, on the condition that he outlive her.

As for his service, what we have is a neighbor’s recollection. Milton once mentioned the military in passing and, in a rare flash of temper when the apartment complex planned to install electronic locks on their door, announced that he was a veteran. Born in 1927, he would have come of age as the Second World War was ending. His branch and dates of service are not known.

A $4 Million Surprise

Janice died in January 2026 at the age of 88. On January 13, a neighbor asked police to check on her, and she was found in her apartment; authorities ruled out foul play. Her online obituary was a single sentence.

Then came the surprises. Her 2015 will left her estate to Milton, if he survived her. He had not, so the fortune went to two Lee County organizations, $2 million each, and both were caught completely off guard:

• Harry Chapin Food Bank ($2 million). President Richard LeBer said Janice was not a volunteer and that he had never met her. She had made a few small donations over the years, but nothing hinted at a gift of this size. Unless the bequest comes with specific instructions, the food bank expects to put it toward operating costs—fuel for its trucks, power for its freezers and coolers, and its staff—behind the millions of pounds of food it distributes every year.
• Lee County Domestic Animal Services ($2 million). A record-breaking gift for the department, it will not be folded into the $9.1 million operating budget. Instead, it is set aside for lifesaving programs, sterilization services, and free or low-cost adoptions. Even Commissioner Cecil Pendergrass, a strong advocate for animal services, had never heard of her.

Commissioner Pendergrass reflected that Janice could have bought herself a very nice house, but appeared perfectly content with the life she had—and that it was a comfort to know she had been thinking of the animals and people of Lee County when she was gone. County commissioners were scheduled to vote on accepting the gift in mid-June 2026, and an item on the county agenda hinted that additional funds might still be on the way, so the final total may yet grow.

An Unsolved Hometown Mystery

Where did her extraordinary fortune come from? No one has been able to say. Lowell Schoenfield, her attorney for several decades, found not a single photograph in her apartment when he went in after her death. She left no social media and no digital footprint, and nothing in her home offered a clue. She accumulated millions in absolute anonymity, living on a modest budget all the while.

Janice was cremated, and her ashes rest beside Milton’s at Fort Myers Memorial Gardens.

Milton Landau (1927–2022) and Janice Blazek share a marker at Fort Myers Memorial Gardens. Her year of death does not yet appear.

Janice may never have wanted recognition. But we know this much: a girl from Sycamore Avenue who earned good marks at Bohemia Public School grew up to make certain that people facing hunger, and animals in need of a home, would be looked after in her adopted corner of Florida long after she was gone. The Sayville Alumni Association is proud to claim her as one of our own—a true Golden Flash.

Do You Remember the Blazeks?

If you knew Janice or her family, the Sayville Alumni Association would be glad to hear from you through sayvillealumni.org.

Sources

• Sayville High School Archives: Sayville Senior Yearbook, Class of 1955 (senior portrait).
• The Mid-Island Mail, September 15, 1937 (birth notice). New York Historic Newspapers.
• The Suffolk County News, June 22, 1945 (Bohemia Public School report cards). New York Historic Newspapers.
• The Suffolk County News, May 2, 1947 (Grade 4 class enrollment). New York Historic Newspapers.
• The Suffolk County News, November 26, 1958 (death notice of Mrs. Frank Kroutil). New York Historic Newspapers.
• Sheldon Zoldan, “Fort Myers woman’s unnoticed life becomes noticed after her death — Harry Chapin Food Bank, Lee County Animal Services each get $2M,” WGCU News, June 15, 2026. wgcu.org
• Online obituary for Janice Blazek, Fort Myers Memorial Gardens (fortmyersmemorial.com).
• Obituary notices for Gustav Blazek Sr., Olga Blazek and Gustav Blazek Jr. (Sayville Alumni Association research files).