Julia Ann Callahan

Ann was born in Frankfort, Indiana on April 3, 1934, the daughter of Robert Price and Emma Crull Murray. Both parents were college graduates and lived in organized housing which was very unusual during the Great Depression. The mother graduated from Purdue in 1931 and lived in the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority house. The father graduated from Butler University with a degree in Banking and Finance while living in the Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity. He was a house brother with the later to be famous Hoagy Carmichael.

Ann displayed an early propensity for music and her parents responded to her interest with lessons in piano, flute, piccolo and voice. She responded with later summers in the Kraft Marching Band and sang in select weddings.

She started collage at Purdue University, transferred to Illinois University after her marriage to husband Jim, and they both returned to Purdue to graduate. While at Purdue she added to her musical credits by singing in the Choraleers (Now called Purduettes). Ann followed in her mother’s legacy by being initiated and living at the ZTA social sorority in her brief period before marriage. She graduated as a distinguished student in Restaurant Management and Dietetics.

She and husband Jim were married throughout their college and viewed all their activities as team efforts. Their verbal pact for salaries was made early in marriage. In cases when both worked, and one was offered a higher paying salary to transfer than the other’s current salary they would both transfer for the one with the higher wage.

After completing school, she stayed on the farm to nurture their young children and support her husband in his career. During this period, she participated in various Home Economics activities, Mother’s Clubs, as well as the Presbyterian Church. All the organizations were planned for their moral and spiritual betterment and socialization of their young family.

They eventually move to Wisconsin where she took a position at the University of Wisconsin teaching in the new Copps Instructional Building which she was allowed to design her own facility. It served as a commercial laboratory kitchen and restaurant for graduate students enrolled in the curriculum of Restaurant Management. The first classes of appreciative students were stimulated and readily reciprocated by offering a steady paid baby-sitting source for couples’ short visit to the Twin Cities or other nearby weekend getaways. This was during the years before the current governmental student loan era.

Later the family moved to Florida where Ann practiced her dietetic skills in a large complex for the elderly, a period before resources allowed her to retire to become a full-fledged civic volunteer.

She sang in the church choir, was ordained to serve her first term as a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church, served on many community boards, and branched out into other environmental interests. She established a new LWV organization in Brandon and was honored as Woman of the Year before leaving because of another family transfer.

In her new environment of northern Illinois, she became a volunteer advocate in court for Domestic Violence victims, in addition to serving her second term as ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church. She soon discovered the volume of spousal abuse was exorbitant and covered the gamut of all society, rich or poor, educated, or uneducated and included all races.

In her short stint in Mexico with husband Jim, she continued her volunteer work in a Del Monte sponsored orphanage while absorbing the mystifying culture of living in a Third World Country. They had considerable travel experience prior to this time, but had never experienced the vastness of that all the citizens were corrupt. The people were very stimulating and openly emotional and warm; unfortunately, their inward conscience and many of the decisions were very corrupt.

The couple retired to Brown County in 1991 to be close to a portion of their nearest family. These years were for fulfillment in nature with time for meditation, family, and community. Ann enjoyed these years to the fullest especially with her work helping her husband restart the Brown County Literacy Coalition. This included her time establishing individual reading to Head Start students.

She continued with the League of Women Voters, varied positions in the United Methodist Church, Lions Club, and numerous assignments in the Historical Society including the presidency and eventually working with her husband to move the Historical Society to Nashville by initiating a totally new concept and purchase of the properties to realize the community dream of a new Brown County History Center.

She and Jim spent many hours wandering the trails in the woods around their home and in the nearby counties. They also found ample time to negotiate the more treacherous and perilous hills of East Tennessee on their many research and photography junkets in search of his lost Melungeon ancestors. Fortunately, they had the correct names to be openly accepted as kin by all the more reclusive and suspicious members of the biracial isolate.

She also found time to take annual trips with Jim into the unknown throughout Africa including isolated Libya, Malaysia, Madagascar, Indonesia, Borneo, Papua New Guinea, many other third world countries in search of knowledge and fulfillment. Her local nature photography was carried in local establishments for sale for years and her travel slides were frequently shown in the area as free educational programs for travel.

She is survived by husband, Jim, two grandchildren in Florida, Ryan and Bonnie, children of their son Kevin and Daughter-in-Law, Lori, whom are both deceased. A daughter Maureen who lives in Indianapolis with two children, Kyle and wife Veronique of Fond Du Lac and Rachel and her two children, and Ann’s great-grandchildren, Eva, and Carter.

Services will be held Saturday March 29, 2025, at the Nashville United Methodist Church 36 South Jefferson St. Nashville, In 47448. With visitation from 1pm to 2pm and a Celebration of Life service at 2pm with Pastor Roy Ice leading the service. Cremation has been chosen, and urn placement will be at the Crull Family Site at Greenlawn Cemetery in Frankfort, Indiana.

In lieu of flowers the family requests donations in Ann’s name be made to the Nashville United Methodist Church.

Bond-Mitchell Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements for Ann.