Jane Bell Morrow

Jane Bell Morrow (née Crose) of Hanford was born in Ojai, California on November 11, 1925 and her family moved to Kings County in 1930 with her father - originally from Tulare County - working in the oil fields as a foreman and farming. On the 9th of August, 2023 she passed away peacefully at 97, following a bout of pneumonia at the Brighton (previously Hacienda) Post-Acute Hospital (with thanks to the staff), a few days after a long-distance goodbye visit from her surviving son.

As the wife of Raymond A Morrow Jr., owner of the Morrow Body Shop on Lacey Boulevard until his early retirement in the late 1960s, Jane was technically a “homemaker”. Nevertheless, beyond being a loving, good-natured, resilient and tolerant mother, she had attended the College of the Sequoias in the mid 1940s, worked for a while as an assistant for a judge, was the manager of the family RayJane Apartments for many years, and head of a record-setting committee that raised funds for one of the major political parties in the early 1960s. She also took pride in being open to friendship with people of any culture or color and in reputedly having been the first female allowed to take an auto shop course and become a member of the agriculture club at Hanford High School in the graduating class of 1943.

Beginning in the late 1960s, she and husband Ray Jr. learned Spanish and lived for more than 20 years at La Audencia beach, near Manzanillo, Mexico before returning to Hanford because of his failing health. Returning also allowed renewing her love of gardening. A memorable reminder of that Mexican experience was a remarkable sea shell collection based primarily on his scuba diving. She will be especially missed by Mexican friends Juan José and Emilia Castillo and their sons Juanito and Allan and Inés in Emilia’s family (Ochoa), as well as Hector Javier Blake Ursua and others in the extended family of his late elder brother Carlos Afredo Blake Ursua from Colima, a recent victim of Covid.

She is survived by her eldest son, Raymond A. Morrow - a graduate of Hanford High class of 1963 and a retired emeritus professor of critical sociology who taught at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada - and his partner Joan M. Reynolds, the spouse Sharon of second son Thomas James Morrow and their children, grandchildren Beau Morrow and Ashlee Morrow, and several children of her farmer brother, Chandler Crose: niece Adrienne Collins (Dale) and their daughter Regan Collins, niece Gail de Campos (Anthony), and nephew Jeff Crose. Adrienne and Dale Collins are owed special thanks for having cared for Jane for many years, initially after the premature death of her second son Tom and with her husband suffering from Parkinsons’ disease for many years, then living independently until the age of 93, and finally at the post-acute hospital, assisted also by Regan Collins and Gail de Campos. Jane was predeceased by her parents Charles Gordon Crose and Florence Mabel Crose, son Thomas James Morrow and husband Raymond A Morrow, Jr., brother Chandler Crose and spouse Orma, and nephews Charles Crose and Shean Crose.

People’s Funeral Chapel is handling the arrangements but there will only be a private ceremony.