In loving memory of
March 14, 1938 – February 2, 2024 · Born in Ogunquit, Maine
She sang to other people’s babies, grew the best dahlias on Elm Street, and never once let anyone leave her kitchen hungry.
Jane grew up in a small house a short walk from the sea in Ogunquit, Maine, the youngest of three. Her father fixed boats; her mother kept the books for half the town. She learned to swim before she could read, and for the rest of her life she said the cold Atlantic was the only medicine she trusted.
At eighteen she took the bus to Boston to train as a nurse. She worked nights on the children’s ward for eleven years, and parents remembered her for decades: the nurse who sang to their babies and always knew where the extra blankets were.
She met Robert at a church dance in 1961, when he stepped on her foot twice and apologised for an hour. They married two summers later, under an arch of leaves her sister had woven the night before.
In 1967 they bought the yellow house on Elm Street in Portland. Anna, Michael and Sam grew up there, with a red kite that lived behind the kitchen door and a mother who could find a lost shoe in any room of the house.
When the children were grown she turned the whole back yard into a garden. Dahlias, sweet peas, forty feet of tomatoes. She won second prize at the county fair three years running and insisted, every time, that the judges had been bribed.
Every Sunday there was blueberry pie, from berries the family picked in August and froze for the year. The recipe card, stained and soft at the corners, is still in the drawer.
“Sit down, eat something, then tell me everything.”
Five grandchildren knew the porch swing as the place for secrets. She taught each of them to whistle with two fingers, and never told their parents who had taught them.
In her seventies she walked to Nubble Light every morning she could, rain or shine, and came home with the same report: the sea was still there, and so was she.
Nurse, gardener, mother, grandmother. Loved, and remembered.
The girl by the sea · Learning to care · Robert · Hands in the soil · Grandma Jane
Jane on her porch, 2018
Ogunquit, Maine, summer 1944
Boston City Hospital School of Nursing, 1956
Jane and Robert, June 8, 1963
The yellow house on Elm Street
Anna, Michael and Sam fly the red kite
In her garden, summer 1975
Sunday blueberry pie
The porch swing, with Lia and Theo
The walk to Nubble Light
Her chair in the garden
Partner
Robert Doe
1935–2019
Parent
Margaret Doe
1909–1990
Child
Anna Doe-Hill
Child
Michael Doe
Child
Sam Doe
First sweet peas of the year. Robert says they smell like 1963.
Walked to the lighthouse. The sea is still there. So am I.
Jane grew up in a small house a short walk from the sea in Ogunquit, Maine, the youngest of three children.
AI answer from the approved story · Source: “The girl by the sea”
On a real page, family can type any question. Answers come only from the story the family approved.
She taught me to whistle with two fingers on that porch swing and made me promise not to tell Mom. I am telling everyone now. Thank you, Grandma.
Lia, her granddaughter · Feb 10, 2024
Jane was my nurse when I was six and very frightened. Fifty years later I still remember her singing to me at three in the morning. She made a hospital feel safe.
Carol Mitchell · Feb 8, 2024
Every July she left a bag of tomatoes on our step with a note: “Too many again. Sorry.” She was never sorry. Neither were we.
Tom from next door · Feb 6, 2024
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