Jane Estelle Wonch

Jane Estelle Kelly was born in 1934 in East Lansing Michigan. Her father was a Geology Professor at Michigan State University and her mother was a homemaker. Jane had a happy childhood growing up with an older sister Connie [deceased] and a younger brother Jim. The family spent summers at their rustic cabin in the deep woods of Ontario Canada. The cabin was in a remote area, and her Dad built the road into it. Some of her many happy childhood memories were helping her Dad build the road into the cabin, learning how to move boulders with levers and the concept of a fulcrum and torque. She didn’t realize that building roads is what people did on chain gangs.

Jane played piano through high school, was active in Girl Scouts earning many badges and learning skills, loved ice skating, ceramics and woodworking. When she was 17 she built a stereo cabinet and entered it in a local contest where she won 1st Place. This was featured in the local newspaper with the headline “She Wins at Boy’s Game.” The cabinet has been in continual use for 70 years.

Jane was a graduate of Michigan State University where she majored in Home Economics and met her future husband, Al Wonch [deceased]. They married in 1957 and had two children, Nancy Wonch Pennington and Barbara Wonch Gibbens. She spent many years in the graphic arts business and the last 10 of her working years as a CNA at Columbine Care Center East – a job she found very rewarding.

The family moved to Colorado from Indiana in 1973 where they bought a house. As homeowners, they thoroughly embraced organic gardening – building compost bins and a hot frame, shredding, growing a huge garden and writing articles for the Rodale Press. Not a fan of chemicals, Jane applied herbicides with a tiny paintbrush. Jane planted her last garden in 2021 – starting her Heritage tomatoes from seed, and harvesting them in late summer with some weighing 1.5 pounds each.

Jane and her husband were active members of the Colorado Mountain Club where they climbed many 14ers and slept in snow caves. They went to the Colorado Mountain School where they learned to hike on ice fields and use an ice axe and crampons, glissade, do technical climbs with ropes, and tie knots that your life could depend on.

Jane and Al were involved with CSU’s International Center for years, and were the host family for graduate students from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malawi. One of the Malawi students has an adult daughter who still keeps in touch.

From 1978 to about 1990 they were active members of the Larimer County Search and Rescue and went on many missions. As part of this volunteer work, both Jane and her husband became EMTs.

Jane loved to bike and did much of her own bike maintenance. She rode to Estes Park for the last time at age 70 and to Wellington for the last time at 80. She decided her bike riding days were over just last August after taking a spill.

Jane was hard working and thrifty. When she was young, her friends nicknamed her “Angus” and at the time of death, her closet contained a few clothing items 60-70 years old, with patches on the patches.

Jane and her husband had a long held respect and love for the outdoors and nature. In the early 1970s, while still living in Indiana, they helped to establish a nascent environmental group called Earth League. The group started a recycling center in the A&P parking lot. Jane recruited her daughters to go door-to-door distributing flyers encouraging people to take their glass, papers and cans to the recycling center. In 1971-72 the concept of recycling was novel, and La Porte Indiana was not a hotbed of environmental activism.

In addition to her two daughters, Jane is survived by her dog Abby, grandsons Zachary [Sarah], Brian [Libby] and Tyler, three great grandchildren, and other extended family. She loved her family and was an avid genealogist, and enjoyed family history. Few things made her happier than being with family.

Jane received Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior when she was 12. This decision informed the remainder of her life. Everywhere she lived she was active in a local church – attending faithfully, teaching Sunday School, cleaning, volunteering on projects, missions, fund raising, helping with pancake breakfasts, going to Bible studies, and being warm and welcoming.

Jane died peacefully on March 22, 2022, leaving behind a long list of jobs on her endless to-do list.