Jane Lee Palazzolo

With inspirational thanks to Jenny Joseph, author of “Warning”

Jane Lee (nee Hicks) Palazzolo, born August 24, 1942, in Alexandria, Virginia,

didn’t wait until she was old to wear purple.

She wore it early and she wore it often,

and looked at you over the top of it

as if to say: go ahead, say something.

She grew up in Old Town Alexandria,

in a family whose roots there go back generations,

and graduated from George Washington High School.

In 1962 she was a single mother

with a newborn son, T. Patrick Daly.

Later she married Brian,

and together they raised a family.

She counted other people’s money for a living,

a bank teller, then a teller trainer,

and managed her own budget just as fastidiously.

She sewed each costume by hand,

every Halloween, every elementary school show:

wings for an angel, a sweeper’s skirt

with rickrack at the hem.

She loved to read, and so did her mother, Boots.

They traded paperbacks back and forth,

read every trash and women’s magazine

on the grocery store rack,

and were regulars at the library.

Every Saturday she took Boots shopping,

often to Landmark Mall,

and to lunch at the S&W Cafeteria.

She was a thoughtful gift giver.

She bought for people months in advance,

finding just the perfect present, on sale,

usually at Woodies.

She collected unicorns,

and sent the unicorn 🦄emoji

in nearly every message.

Her humor was dry and sarcastic and sudden.

She smiled a lot. The snide one meant you were in trouble.

She never apologized

for being a single mother,

or for being fiercely independent,

and in recent years she was grateful for her neighbors

who made it possible to stay that way.

She held that a cat can be a child,

and that Jazzy, known to her only as Hoochie Koochie Girl,

was her favorite. She called her son-in-law the world’s best

and, in turn, signed her cards WBMIL:

World’s Best Mother-in-Law.

She dearly loved her children,

and as Nonna, her grandchildren

and her great-grandchildren.

Her parents, Viola Elizabeth (Boots) Sutherland

and James Henry. Hicks, passed before her,

as did her son, T. Patrick Daly, and her granddaughter, Amanda (nee Daly) Farischon.

She leaves her daughter, Angela Palazzolo, and son-in-law, Gene Morris, and their children;

her husband, Brian; her grandson, Justin Daly, and wife, Raven;

many great-grandchildren;

and her favorite fur child, Jazzy.

Visitation at 10 a.m., service at 11 a.m. on November 4, 2026 at Demaine Funeral Home, 520 S. Washington St., Alexandria, Virginia. Interment to follow at Mount Comfort Cemetery at 12:30 p.m.

Rather than flowers, Jane wished for donations to be made to CARES Health, https://www.careshealth.org/donate/