Jean was the oldest child of Arthur Roy Coleman and Margaret Paterson.  Her sister Betty was born in 1918 and her brother Murray was born in 1920.  Jean's middle name was taken from the maiden name of her maternal grandmother, Fanny Hope.

Jean died in a car accident about two months before she would have turned seven.  She was hit by a car on Woodward Avenue in front of the apartment building where her family lived at Woodward and Six Mile Road.  She lingered in the hospital for a day and died of internal bleeding on Monday, August 6, 1923.