Jane's Kids' Fund

Laughed often. Loved much. Left too soon.

Those words, etched on her tombstone, provide the briefest summary of Jane Elizabeth Arnold’s life. She died in 1988—a few days shy of her twenty-sixth birthday.

Ask her family to describe her, and the stories pour forth. Like anyone who has lost a loved one, those stories help sustain family and friends.

They will tell you that she did just about anything with intensity—worked, played, loved and fought. They talk about the loyalty she displayed. She would defend those she loved wholeheartedly yet turn around and give them an upbraiding when due. As number five in a family of six, she knew how to hold her own.

She had a tough life. Those who did not know her might believe she had a hard shell, but they would be mistaken.

“Other people bring stray dogs home. Jane brought stray people home,” her family told the priest when planning her funeral. She didn’t have much, but she always found room to reach out to someone who she believed needed a shoulder, a meal, some money, a place to sleep, or advice.

Jane’s Kids’ Fund will help serve children Jane wanted but never had. And, it will do it in a way Jane would have done herself by reaching out to those in need due to abuse, abandonment, addiction, depression or low self-esteem.

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