Jane Nolting Meniktos

Born July 3, 1948, Jane was the youngest child of Lindsay Crumpler Nolting of Danville, Virginia and Frederick E. Nolting, Jr. of Richmond and Henrico County. She is survived by her mother, daughters Joelle Meniktos-Nolting and Laura Marina Meniktos, granddaughter Ada Alexander, two sisters Molly Nolting Bruner and Grace Lindsay Nolting and four first cousins: May Carter, Katharine C. Templeton, Lawrence C. Carter, and George Carter.

Jane was predeceased by her father (1989) and her sister Frances N. Temple (1995). Her former husband, George Meniktos, died in 2014.

Funeral services will begin at 11:00am in the chapel to conclude at the graveside on Monday, April 24, at St. Paul’s, Ivy Episcopal Church, 851 Owensville Road, Charlottesville, Virginia. Light refreshments will be served in the parish house after the conclusion of the graveside service.

Jane Nolting’s early years were spent with her parents and three sisters at Sully, a 1790s farmhouse near Chantilly, then a crossroad in rural Fairfax County. Now Sully is managed by the Fairfax County Park Authority. Found recently among Jane’s papers is a list she hand-wrote and stapled to a 2009 Sully Historic Site brochure:

Fun Things at Sully:

* Singing for Santa Claus

* Christmas Tree Party

* Sniffing coats

* The big swing/shinnying up the rope

* Indian Guide [Jane’s preferred role, particularly when diplomats’ families ventured out from Washington]

* Painting the outdoors kitchen

* My playful, tuneful FATHER

* Sliding down the hayloft

* Watching Aurora Borealis skies

* Climbing crabapple trees

* Crossing railroad cut on big pipe

* Going to D.C./NATIONAL GALLERY w/Mama

When the Noltings moved to Paris in 1956, Jane’s opportunities to investigate the fine arts proliferated. Going on eight, she took in the chateaux of the Loire Valley with keen enthusiasm, then declared the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux—newly discovered and open to the public— “best of all.”

Four and a half years as a day student in a convent school in France and two in a convent school in Saigon, where the same French curriculum held sway, left Jane convinced that absorbing the French language was her best prize from that phase of her education. During Jane’s last days, an empathetic Heartland Hospice worker reported that a phrase of French whispered in Jane’s good ear brought a gleam to her eye.

An artist clearly, Jane learned best through quiet observation of experienced artists and crafters at work. She looked hard at objects that caught her eye, wherever she found them. Employed as a “hand” at established stained glass studios in California, she learned all phases of production: from design to cartooning to cutlining to trace painting to matting… Later, in Charlottesville, Jane Meniktos, mother of academically inclined children, became an habituée in the Piedmont Virginia Community College pottery studio and in life drawing groups downtown. She eventually equipped three spaces at home in which to work on pottery, glass and painting. Family members all shared a flair for gardening.

Charlottesville City Market was Jane's favorite place to show and sell all but her largest works. She said the City Market and Christmas Market “upholds a tradition of pride in hand made and homegrown goods."

Jane was an active member of Trinity Episcopal Church in Charlottesville. She loved the church people, enjoyed assisting the altar guild and serving as a lay reader, and was touched that members came to give her a ride to Sunday services after she stopped driving.

Jane worked often as an Officer of Election at the former Tonsler Park Precinct polling station.

She was a member of Fry’s Spring Beach Club for more than thirty years and swam laps there in the summer every chance she got until COVID lockdowns and declining health made it impossible.

Jane’s commissioned art includes design of windows for the Armenian Cathedral in Fresno, California, and windows for the Catholic Church of Saint Isidore the Farmer near Orange, Virginia, fabricated and installed by Vee Osvald Studio. She designed a Good Shepherd window for the library at the Catholic School of Charlottesville, two windows for St. Luke’s Episcopal Chapel, Simeon and smaller works for private houses.

Friends of Jane Nolting Meniktos can contribute to research on Neurofibromatosis 2, which afflicted her adult life. The link is: https://www.at.virginia.edu/supportuvahealth and designation is "Asthagiri- Education & Research (21977)." Dr. Ashok Asthagiri, who leads NF2 research program at Uva was Jane's favorite person there.