It began with her husband Charles’s family, who lived in nearby Manchester, Vermont. Their house was most notable for its extensive gardens, which were started by her husband’s grandmother. Both her mother-in-law and father-in-law were patients of the hospital and became devoted to its mission to provide care to the community.
When Charles, known to his friends as Pete, and Jane retired to the family home from New Jersey in 1979, they soon became hospital supporters, as well. Pete and Jane kept up to date on hospital projects and used hospital services throughout their many years in the area. Jane remembers the push to convert inpatient rooms from double to single occupancy, which seemed to her like an indispensable project.
"When we were considering our wills, we put a certain amount aside for the hospital,” said Jane. “It is very pleasant to be able to do that.”
Upon his death in 2017, Pete made many bequests to the organizations he believed in. Of his bequest to the hospital, half supported the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Orthopedic Research and Education Endowment and half the Wellness Garden, which will be built as a part of an ambitious renovation and expansion dubbed Vision2020.
“He was a thinking giver,” Jane says of her husband. “He thought very hard about what he gave, and he followed through.”
She appreciates the leadership of Tom Dee and the affiliation with Dartmouth-Hitchcock. She has continued supporting the hospital generously in the years since her husband’s death, especially the Caring for the Caregiver program, which supports nurses and other clinical staff through the emotional hardships of their work, and to the Vision2020 Capital Campaign.
Jane signed an Irrevocable Pledge Agreement for a planned gift of an unspecified amount in 2019. Irrevocable pledges are especially important to the project.
“I feel very strongly about the hospital,” she noted. “There are a lot of good things happening there.”