Jane was one of three children born to Earl and Mary Willis of Wichita Kansas. Her older brother David and his wife Dianne live in Los Angeles, California, and her younger sister Elizabeth and her husband Tim live in Wichita, Kansas. Jane is survived by John Johnston, her husband of 52 years, a daughter, Cara (Jim) Firestone, and Cara and Jim’s two son’s Gavin and Connor, and a son, Andrew Johnston, his wife (Lindsay), and their two sons Wyatt and Tanner.
Jane was born in Pryor, Oklahoma on June 29, 1946. She attended elementary, junior high, and high school in Wichita, Kansas and graduated from East High School in 1964. Jane was one of three students chosen to address her high school graduating class. It was not a coincidence that the first line of her speech was: “Time is a curious thing. It moves and moves and keeps on moving.” Jane moved in and through time in her own curious, special way her entire life.
Jane was a graduate of Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. She majored in comparative literature with a minor in cultural anthropology. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi Sorority, and participated in early campus anti-Vietnam War protests.
Jane was a mother, grandmother, wife, poet, the author of a children’s book, Miss Lucy Jane, a children’s story teller who transported three and four year old children to imaginary worlds, the director of very enthusiastic pre-school choirs, the creator of unique multi-week reading adventure and exploration programs first as a volunteer and later as an employee of the Lawrence, Kansas Public Library Children’s Department, and a volunteer who created programs for touring school groups at the University of Kansas Anthropology Museum.
Jane and John Johnston were married on September 7, 1968. They lived for a time in Denver, Colorado then moved to the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota where Jane was a volunteer in the Tribe’s Head Start Program, and started and led a sewing club for Tribal women. Later John and Jane lived in Pierre, South Dakota where Jane was La Leche League Leader and an active advocate for variety of women’s issues. John and Jane’s daughter Cara and son Andrew were born in South Dakota.
John, Jane, Cara, and Andrew moved to Lawrence, Kansas in 1980. While in Lawrence Jane was active in a variety of school, church, and neighborhood programs and activities, one of which was her beloved Delphi Book Club, a group she belonged to for more than 30 years. John and Jane lived in Lawrence until 2015 when they moved to Katy, Texas to be nearer Cara and her family and Andrew and his family as Jane’s health deteriorated.
The following line is taken from a burial arrangements letter she wrote to John, Cara, and Andrew. “A little poetry, any time you read it, is tribute enough and beautiful.” If you want to do more in Jane’s name she became increasingly interested in tree planting initiatives in recent years, and she was an avid bird watcher through her family room windows in Katy. Support for any local plant-a-tree or bird habitat improvement initiative would be fitting recognition. Jane always very much enjoyed her visits to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas, and that too is a possibility.
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