Jane Ward
A memorial service will be held in Lincoln on Sunday, Oct. 2 for longtime Lincoln resident Jane “Jinx” Leichtle Ward who died on July 14. She leaves behind a sister, four children, four daughter/son-in-laws, six grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and many friends.
Jane was born in Waterbury, Conn. on July 30, 1933 to Paul Adrian and Eleanor Blondeck Leichtle. Born at the trough of America’s Great Depression, that economic setting and the Second World War which followed were formative childhood experiences. Waterbury, aka “Brass City,” played a major strategic role in the supplying of war materiel. Looking back she characterized herself as “a child of the war.” During the war, Jane learned at the Salvation Army how to knit, which became a lifelong avocation and passion. In adulthood, her children and numerous friends became beneficiaries of her voluminous production of sweaters. Jane’s childhood home was shared with two sisters: Mary Lou Bay, who died in 2016, and Adrienne Maxwell, who survives her sisters.
Jane attended Waterbury’s Crosby High School, graduating as class valedictorian in 1951. She balanced her academic pursuits with being a cheerleader for Crosby’s athletics teams, as well as extracurricular activities such as the school German language club. Relatively small and light, Jane enjoyed sharing recollections of being tossed high up in the air during cheerleading routines.
With Crosby behind her, Jane entered Wellesley College as a Wellesley Scholar. Her fondest recollections from her Wellesley years were connected to the camaraderie she shared with her classmates, in particular with her dorm-mates at Munger Hall in the center of the campus. She formed many friendships while living there which endured for the rest of her life. Taking a break from the intense thinking-heavy demands of academics, summers she worked as a waitress at the Asticou Inn in Northeast Harbor, Maine, near Acadia National Park. It was there that she met Thomas Dillingham Ward. They were married the summer between her college junior and senior years. They separated in 1969 and subsequently divorced.
After graduating from Wellesley in 1955, Jane had four children in slightly over five years: Geoffrey, Benjamin, Thomas Jr., and Eliza. After living in Concord and on Beacon Hill during the initial years of her marriage, she moved to Lincoln to stay — excepting short residences in London and the San Francisco Bay area later in life — in the fall of 1959. After returning for good in 1992, she routinely pronounced Lincoln “the best place in the world to live,” appreciative of its beauty and the town having been a terrific place for raising her children. She was also deeply grateful for the role her circle of friends, constituting a notional village, played in supporting her family and career. Observing them in their adulthoods, she was delighted to pronounce her kids, however different from each other, as all having an “SOH” – sense of humor.
Jane started her professional career in 1964 working for the legendary Cambridge research and development company Bolt Beranek and Newman. She moved on from BBN in 1969, in part over philosophical objections to their contribution to the arms race. She held several management consulting positions over the next seven years before landing at Digital Equipment in 1976, where she remained until she retired in 1992. She met her second husband, David Cope, at DEC in 1978. They soon discovered a mutual intense interest in Africa and its wildlife. After an initial game viewing tour to Kenya, they went on to organize and lead 14 tours themselves — to Kenya, Botswanna, Tanzania, and Zambia. Jane considered her trips with David to Africa to be highlights of her life. They also traveled to Europe many times.
Subsequent to her retirement, Jane and David enjoyed pursuing their individual and common interests from their Lincoln home. Hers included knitting (of course), reading, history, and cooking. Their daily rituals routinely involved doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, games of backgammon, and croquet when the weather allowed. They enjoyed entertaining friends and family and the aforementioned traveling. She and David included grandchildren in several of their trips abroad, reveling in exposing that generation to the wider world. Her first grandchild, Tyler, son of Tom Jr. and his wife Andrea Ward, was born in 1984. He was followed by Christina (1985), also of Tom and Andrea; Kathleen (1988) and Martin (1991), children of Ben and his wife Mary Pat Daly; and Izabel (1997) and Alexander (2003), children of Eliza and husband Tim Mar.
A year after David’s death in 2015, Jane moved from her home of 57 years to an apartment near the town commercial center, where she lived independently until her death. She appreciated her modest unit with its southwestern facing windows, allowing her to enjoy sunsets. A significant avenue of fulfillment during these later years was her participation in the Lincoln Council on Aging’s knitting and bridge groups – the former offering a platform for passing on her knowledge of and passion for the craft to younger enthusiasts. Through to her life’s end Jane proclaimed that she was glad to have been born when and where she was, saying that her generation “lived in the best of times.”
A memorial service will be held for Jane on Sunday, Oct. 2 at 2 p.m. in Bemis Hall. Any contributions made in her memory would be appropriately directed to the Lincoln Council on Aging. Click here for her online guestbook. Arrangements are under the care of Dee Funeral Home.