Her classmates at Brush High School in Lyndhurst remember her as Jeanne Marie Norton, where she was the most precocious teenage bowler in Greater Cleveland. At the age of 14 she bowled in adult leagues, and six years later she turned pro.
She married in 1980 at age 22 and became Jeanne Maiden, which is how the local bowling world knew her. She was Cleveland’s “Queen of Bowling” in 1981, ’82 and ’83. She continued to dominate women’s professional bowling for the rest of the decade.
In the 1986 Central States Tournament at Ambassador Brookpark Lanes, she rolled 40 consecutive strikes. She had her last seven in a row in the doubles. In singles, she rolled consecutive 300 games and added nine more strikes in a row in the third game en route to an 864 series, which was a world record since broken several times.
In 1992, she married Stan Naccarato and became Jeanne Maiden-Naccarato, the name on the plaque when she was inducted into the Women’s International Bowling Congress Hall of Fame in 1999, and to the Professional Women’s Bowling Association Hall of Fame in 2002.
Her husband, Stan, died in 2016 at the age of 88. Jeanne lives in Tacoma, Washington, where she owns a bowling center: Tower Lanes.
