Shirley B. Lane

Shirley Lane passed away peacefully in her home on March 13, 2026. She was born Shirley Jane Brigance on October 24, 1926, in Culver Hospital, the daughter of Jane Martin and William Norwood Brigance, a renowned speech professor at Wabash College. She was a 1943 graduate of Crawfordsville High School and a 1947 graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She went on to obtain her master’s degree from Ohio State.

In 1950 she taught public address and diction at Auburn University where she met Roger Oest, a naval officer whom she would marry that year. Roger’s assignments took her to Charleston, South Carolina; Williamsburg, Virginia; and Argentia, Newfoundland. Upon Roger’s retirement she returned to Crawfordsville where she taught briefly at Wabash then obtained her license as an investment broker at Edward D. Jones & Company. While in Crawfordsville, she was active in St. John’s Episcopal Church, Athenian and the Sugar Creek Players. She also loved to play bridge and cruise the Mediterranean.

After her husband died in 1990, she married Col. Robert Lane in 1992 and moved to San Antonio. When Col. Lane passed away in 1995, Shirley elected to remain in Texas rather than face the winters up north. In San Antonio she was a lay minister at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and a member of the Kiwanis Club. She continued to play bridge and travel wherever and whenever she could.

Shirley is survived by three children: Jack, Chicago, IL; Tom, Holland, MI; Jenny (Ray), Charlotte, NC; five grandchildren (Brett, John, Chrissie, Jamie and Margaret) and three great grandchildren (Ezra, Ryleigh and Reid). A celebration of her life will be held in San Antonio on October 24, what would have been Shirley’s one hundredth birthday. In lieu of flowers, the family would ask that you consider a donation to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. A tribute page has been established on their website under her first married name: Shirley Oest.