Dorothy "Jane" Ingels

Our mother, Dorothy Jane (Brixey) Ingels was born on May 28, 1937 in Norman, Oklahoma and died in her Norman home on March 29,2025 at the age of 87. She was preceded in death by our father, George William Ingels, who died on April 8, 2020.

Jane (she went by her middle name) was born to John Clark and Dorothea B (Morrison) Brixey. She was younger sister to John Clark Brixey, Jr. (“Jack”) who was born in 1930. Jane’s father said that they delayed having their second child because of the Great Depression, so at least one good thing resulted from that era: our mother. Jane’s father was a math professor at the University of Oklahoma, where he was a ticket taker for OU football games for 50 years, and her mother was a homemaker of many talents, including baking bread, making soap, growing violets, beating extremely thick fudge, and darning socks (to name a few that caught her grandchildren’s attention).

Jane went to McKinley Elementary School and taught all her children the school’s fight song (we can still sing it now). She graduated from Norman High School in 1955. It was in high school that she met the love of her life, our father, George Ingels. She played the clarinet and he played the saxophone and was drum major in the NHS band. They went to two high school proms together and also went to a dance at the Guthrie Scottish Rite Temple, where they had to sneak away to a private area so George could teach Jane the dance moves. George and Jane both attended the University of Oklahoma, where they were again in the marching band together. They had fond memories of going to Miami and marching in the Orange Bowl Parade during the Bud Wilkenson era.

Jane graduated from OU, having been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. She had straight A’s her whole life except for a Modern Dance course in college, in which she got a dreaded B. She was encouraged to apply for medical school but decided that she wanted to focus on being a mother instead.

Jane and George were married at First Christian Church in Norman on June 15, 1958. They went to Rocky Mountain National Park for their honeymoon, a place they loved and visited many times over the years, including camping in tents with infant and toddler children and finally, in 2018, when they went back to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary.

Jane and George lived in a tiny basement apartment in Oklahoma City while George went to OU Medical School. Jane worked as a medical technologist at St. Anthony’s Hospital until she gave birth to their son, Stephen Clark Ingels, in 1961. The family moved to Dallas for George to complete a pathology residency, and it was there that Carolyn “Susanne” Ingels (Bradley) and Gregory Allen Ingels were born in 1963 and 1965. They moved again to Illinois where George served as a captain and physician in the in the United States Air Force. Their daughter Marianne Ingels (Bacharach) was born at Scott Air Force Base in 1967. Jane’s four children could not have asked for a better mother.

The family moved for the last time in 1968 to what was then Hall Park, Oklahoma, now a part of Norman. George and Jane lived in the same house –while doing many remodeling projects on it—for the rest of their lives.

Jane was an active member of First Christian Church from her childhood through the end of her life. She did everything from teaching Sunday school to serving as a deacon and an elder, from raising money for various building funds to helping compile a church cookbook. She was a member of Christian Women’s Fellowship, and she and George were long-time members of a church discussion group; these groups were a source of lifelong friendships. Her children have fond memories of their parents’ church discussion group’s gathering every Christmas at their home in Hall Park for dinner and a very entertaining white elephant gift exchange. Along with all their other activities at the church, Jane and George helped design and raise money for the church’s columbarium, a beautiful and peaceful place where their ashes will reside together.

Jane was a tremendous supporter of her children and all that they did. We remember her most for her kindness and caring--and lots of worrying--on our behalf. She was an excellent listener, one of those rare people who could truly listen without giving a lot of advice. (Our dad always had plenty of advice; we didn’t mind. Our parents made a great team in that regard.) She never ran out of energy to help us. She stayed up many nights with us, sewing on uniform patches and making more than a few costumes, helping with school projects such as Jello models of human cells and making ancient Roman bread. She not only was the main person to housetrain and care for our dogs, but she helped us care for the stray cats (she was allergic!) who twice had kittens in our garage, and helped take care of the orphaned opossum babies Susanne and a friend found, crying out from their dead mother’s pouch, on their walk home from school. (This was back before wildlife rehab was available.)

The logistics of being a mother to four children within six years of each other in age must have been daunting, but our mother handled it remarkably well. Not only did she drive us to school and ballet and music and gymnastics and judo lessons and swim lessons and soccer practice, but she served as a Cub Scout den mother, a Camp Fire Girl leader, and was among the Oklahoma Youth Orchestra parents who raised the money to send the orchestra to China in 1981. She and George served as chaperones for that trip as well as for the youth orchestra’s later trip to Scandinavia. George and Jane made sure to attend every performance and special event for their children, and later they made the same effort for their grandchildren, whom they adored.

Jane was deeply committed to the well-being of her own children and to that of other children in the community, and she was a strong believer in public schools. She ran for school board and won at a time when she had one child at Eisenhower Elementary, one at Irving Middle School, one at Central Mid High School, and one at Norman High. She served three terms (fifteen years) as a dedicated member of the Norman Public Schools Board of Education.

Jane was very active other ways in the Norman community. She was involved with many organizations: a garden club, a music club (she played the piano well into her adult life), League of Women Voters, the Hall Park planning commission, the Assistance League, PEO, and the City of Norman’s Greenbelt Commission, to name just a few. She helped improve the lives of many people via The Christmas Store and Operation School Bell, which provided shoes and clothing to children in need.

George and Jane were the ultimate team, happily married partners in projects and adventures at home and on the road. One of their first big adventures came when they bought some land near Little Axe. They built a house on it themselves and included their children (the youngest of whom recalls inflicting too many hammer dents on the siding to count, while the oldest—when he was a young teen--got to experience perching high on the rooftop and installing wood shingles). Neither George nor Jane had ever left the country prior to 1978, buy they decided that year to take their kids on a big trip—first stop Egypt, then to Greece, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, France, and England—for which each member of the family had one carry-on bag (Dad got two) and they did their laundry in hotel sinks every night.

Jane and George weren’t afraid of road trips, either. They took their children to Florida to see a moon launch, a trip that was complicated by a swarm of bees entering their car and stinging everyone except the baby. Later they had a huge scare when they nearly lost one of the children in Mammoth Cave. Jane and George loved the wilderness. They took their children on long road trips to see multiple national parks, including Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Glacier, Yosemite, and Mesa Verde, and they camped in tents in most of the parks. Travel was generally by un-airconditioned four-door pick-up truck with a camper shell on the back and nothing on the radio but whatever could be picked up from the local area. The family came to appreciate the stops where you could pay some money and take a hot shower, and also got good at keeping an eye out for motels that had signs saying “Vacancy”.

As her children have gotten older it has become very clear to them that their mother was a genius at logistics. Planning for weeks of camping or travelling the world with four children and very little luggage must have required tremendous attention to detail. She and their dad managed to make it look pretty easy.

Even after their children were grown, Jane and George continued their adventures. They hiked down the Grand Canyon and rafted the class five rapids on the Colorado River. They hiked the Milford Track in New Zealand and hiked around Mont Blanc in Europe. They climbed glacier flows in Canada and they zip lined in Costa Rica. They, along with son Steve and daughter-in-law Tanya, traveled to Bolivia for a Norman Rotary club project and then stayed in an ecovillage in the jungle.

They loved art and were supporters of the Fred Jones Museum of Art and the Firehouse Art Station. They attended the Prix de West at the Cowboy Hall of Fame every year. They took trips with the OU Museum of Art to Los Angeles and Russia and Spain. They particularly loved classical music and enjoyed hearing not only their children and grandchildren perform, but also attending Oklahoma Philharmonic concerts where their daughter-in-law, Kelli Ingels, performed.

After George retired from Norman Regional Hospital, Jane and George decided to start a new project together and began Ingels Vineyard in northeast Norman, which was an interesting choice since, up until that point, they both had been tea-totalers who knew next to nothing about wine. They jumped right in and developed their own expertise. They even wrote a book together on the management of Oklahoma vineyards. They designed and helped build a house on the property and planted and grew both Merlot and award-winning Riesling grapes. It was truly a labor of love since they never made money with the vineyard. Many people share happy memories of the annual harvests at the vineyard, where volunteers gathered at dawn to bring in the grapes, with background music from an accordion and with the promise of an excellent brunch when the work was finished.

Jane and George’s grandchildren will always remember those harvests, along with the fort and zipline that Jane and George built for them on the vineyard property. Other favorite memories were Estes rocket launches and the annual Fourth of July (relatively safe but still exciting) fireworks at the vineyard, along with many family gatherings at the house on Ravenwood. Easter egg hunts and Christmas gatherings and random birthday and other celebrations with Jane and George will be cherished memories for all of us.

Jane did everything experts say to do to avoid getting Alzheimer’s disease—she was active and social, constantly learned new things and ate a healthy diet—but not long after George’s death in April of 2020 she began to develop dementia, and eventually, on March 29, 2025, it took her life. She died at home under the care of her family and of hospice. Until the very end Jane loved watching the birds and the squirrels in her back yard, and we will be forever grateful that she never had to live anywhere but at home. Her last few years were difficult, but up until a few months prior to her death she still went to church every week and enjoyed seeing friendly and welcoming faces there. We are so grateful for the support of the First Christian Church family. We are so appreciative of the support of her friends and neighbors, and for the excellent care provided by her hospice team.

We are thankful that our mother’s suffering has ended, though we already miss her terribly. It is with deep gratitude that we feel the united presence of our parents still in our lives, and we suspect we always will. We were so very lucky to have been their children.

Our mother was deeply engaged in the community, someone who tended to worry but always translated her concerns into action. In her honor, we ask that you also take action and speak up for some of the things she cared about, among them the public schools, helping those in need, the national parks, voting rights, the arts, and mundane but important issues like water run-off and pollution. She would support any effort, large or small, to make anything in this world better. As her family, we also hope you will speak out to ask for restoration of the recently cut funding for Alzheimer’s research. It is a terribly cruel disease and humanity needs a cure.

Jane is survived by her children, Stephen Clark Ingels (married to Tanya Ingels and father to George William Ingels II and Hannah Karin Ingels), Carolyn Susanne Bradley (mother of Alexandria Camille Cox and Rachael Joanne Bradley), Gregory Allen Ingels (married to Kelly Ingels and father of Henry Fitzgerald Ingels and William Fitzgerald Ingels), and Marianne Ingels Bacharach (married to Phil Bacharach and mother of Audrey Madeline Bacharach and John Maximilian Bacharach). She is also survived by nephews Mark Brixey (married to Pam Brixey, father of Jared Brixey) and Tom Brixey (married to Lynda Brixey), and by brother-in-law Bill Ingels and his daughter, niece Cindy Ingels.