Jane L. Bartter
Jane Lillard Bartter died peacefully on December 15, 2023, at the age of 102.
Jane was born on July 10, 1921, in Marion, the daughter of Walter Huston and Ethel Hazen Lillard. Because her father was headmaster of Tabor Academy, she was one of only four girls to attend the all-boys school at the time, graduating in 1937. Jane did a postgraduate year at the Knox School before attending Smith College, where she majored in early education and child development.
Jane’s career as an educator was put on hold. World War II broke out as she graduated and was drafted by Naval Intelligence to serve in the war effort. She served in Washington, D.C., for the next two years as one of a group of young women now referred to as the “Code Girls.” The Code Girls worked to decipher coded Japanese transport messages, helping the Navy to identify and destroy war supply ships.
During this time, she met her future husband, Frederic C. Bartter, a Harvard-trained doctor. The two were married in 1946 and spent the first year in Guatemala, where Fred was posted by the Public Health Service to research a tropical eye disease affecting U.S. troops. They moved to New York the following year, where Jane was hired as director of recreational therapy at Presbyterian Hospital. When Fred was appointed an intern at Mass General Hospital in 1948, the couple moved to Boston. Jane was assistant director of the Simmons College Nursery School for a year and then director of the Laboratory School at Children’s Hospital.
In 1951, Fred was appointed chief of the Endocrine-Hypertension Branch at the National Institutes of Health, and the couple moved yet again, this time to Washington, D.C., where they would raise their three children, Frederic Jr., Thaddeus, and Pamela.
Jane joined the staff of the Norwood School in Bethesda, Md., in 1959, where she spent the next 18 years teaching kindergarten and eventually taking on administrative roles, including assistant to the director and a stint as acting director. Upon her retirement, she was hailed as “dedicated and devoted, concerned and perceptive — always giving more of herself physically and of her talents and time than was ever expected.”
When Fred retired from the Public Health Service in 1978, he took a position at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. The couple loved the Spanish influence and heritage of the city. Jane retired from teaching and started a new venture importing clothing and folk art from Central and South America, drawing on her time in Guatemala as a newlywed.
Jane remained in Texas after Fred’s sudden death in 1983 but eventually moved to Lincoln in 2010 to be close to her daughter and grandchildren. Always wanting to be useful, she immediately volunteered at Codman Community Farms, answering the phone and doing accounting. Incredibly, at 93, she volunteered two mornings per week at the Lincoln Schools, tutoring first graders in reading. She also joined the Church Service League at St. Anne’s-in-the-Fields.
Jane was a devoted wife and mother. She was also passionate about dogs, animal rights, feeding the hungry, and effecting political change.
Jane’s son Frederic Jr. died in 2008. She is survived by her daughter Pamela Bartter, her son Thaddeus Bartter, four grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.
Family and friends will gather to honor and remember Jane for her memorial service on Saturday, Jan. 20, at 11 a.m. in St. Anne’s in-the-Fields Episcopal Church (147 Concord Rd., Lincoln).
Arrangements under the care of Concord Funeral Home, which provided this obituary. To visit Jane’s online guestbook, click here.
