Jane Lee

Jane Marie Lee was a caring person, concerned about the world and the lives of her family, friends, and neighbors. She left this world suddenly on February 2, 2021 at age 85. She was born to Robert and Hazel Wilkerson September 9, 1935 in Glasgow, Montana. She valued learning and education, as her parents did. Towards that end, she worked steadily through school despite the many obstacles and attitudes that discourage women from achievements. She earned a Ph.D. In Special Education while at the same time raising three children on her own. Her work life was hampered by sexism but she and others in her generation gradually pushed awareness on her male colleagues. She encouraged and mentored other women. She retired from Illinois State University as a full professor. Her legacy of teaching and empowerment of women and minorities continues to this day. ? In her prime she was an adventurous traveler. She traveled to Europe and Africa, saw the Great Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower; tent-camped in lion country in Botswana. She was granted a FullBright scholarship and with that she spent a year in Botsawa educating African special education students. She kept a small house and gardened around it, keeping an eye for the kraits and cobras that might be hiding in the plants.  She was married five times, the last four in an attempt to find someone compatible with her beliefs to provide a close relationship, and also act as a father figure to her three children, David, DeeDee and Patty. At some point, she decided to go it alone and lived happily ever after.  An atheist at her death, she struggled with a longing to know God and a rational mind that found gods the invention of people. She experimented with a few forms of spirituality and talked with family and friends about religion. In the end she made her peace with the finality of life and spent her remaining days with a series of beloved cats and art projects. Jane was an accomplished artist and won medals in art shows for her conceptual fiber arts, which were unconventional and were received uneasily by a few fellow artists. She worked in stained glass too. She had a passion for gardening and at one point in her life, when she had quit her last husband, she put her spare energy in building and maintaining an immense garden full of exotic plants, most grown from seed that she had ordered. These were germinated in her basement under dozens of shop lights.  She was fond of music and played the piano until arthritis got the better of her fingers. Her home was often filled with classical music and she had boxes of tapes and CD of music. She had a succession of pianos in her life. At the end she kept a baby grand piano in her living room.  During her later years of teaching at ISU she bought a large decrepit Victorian house in Bloomington, Illinois. This house she rehabilitated with great care. Perhaps it was symbolic of her life if such a symbol to represent all that she was is needed. She replaced all the windows, insulated the walls and attic spaces, redid the hardwood floors. And found peace there.  She was a driven, dogged, project-oriented person. Perhaps this trait came from surviving polio as a child while others in those days died. Life was to be lived and experienced to the fullest in whatever time one had; for the rest would be silence. Jane raised her children to work as a team, to cook, do chores and find life hobbies that would sustain them through life. She valued education and encouraged her children to do well in school and go to college.  She lived as she wished at the end, a voracious reader despite her failing eyesight. In the last year of her life, she had joined a book club and received boxes of books to read. At the end she was still trying to understand our changing society, our political struggles and the psychology of people. Using a multiple disciplinary approach, she read about epigenetics, futurism, evolution and science.  The great puzzles of who we are and why we are were questions that she never quite solved, but her determination to use her mind to consider these great issues was part of a life spent learning and giving. If you would, continue to work to make the world a better place. It was what she wanted. Jane is survived by her three children; DeNalda (Bart), David (Elaine), Patricia (Brad); seven grandchildren; 2 great grandchildren; and her sister Melissa (Roger); a niece and two nephews.