Jane Elliott Waddell was born on February 24, 1908, to Starling and Florence Dann Waddell in Columbus, Ohio. She had an older sister, Florence Esther, (both born at a Stoddart Avenue house) and a younger sister, Charlotte Ann. They moved to 424 Fairwood Avenue until the family grew and they needed a larger home. When Jane was in the 2nd grade at Franklin Elementary School in 1915, they exchanged homes with Starling's parents and moved to 48 Hoffman Avenue, where Jane lived until she left for college. Starling built a sun room off the kitchen and an apartment above it for his parents. Starling's mother complained that she could not grow anything in the yard at Fairwood Avenue, but Starling raised beautiful flowers and tomatoes in the small yard at Hoffman Avenue. He loved roses and gladiolas, was an avid photographer, and collected stamps and coins. Sometimes Jane would watch him at work in his garage workshop. He made the lamp that she had at her bedside for many years. Jane thought Starling was sort of lonely with all those girls in the family. He was tall and thin and had beautiful white hair and smoked cigarettes. His mother lived with the family until a broken hip led to her death in 1949, shortly before her 101st birthday.

Starling was one of four sons of Frank G. Waddell and Mary Jane Elliott. He co-owned an ice plant with his brother Percy, the "Franklin Ice Mfg. Co." (Tom Metters, son of Charlotte Ann, has the press that made the company seal.) Big blocks of ice were delivered to homes by horse and wagon. One day Jane climbed on the back of the ice truck to get a piece of ice, and that was forbidden! She said it was the only spanking she ever got. When electricity and refrigerators became more common, the business was sold and it became the "City Ice and Fuel Co.". Starling then learned Electrical Engineering at Ohio State University and worked as an electrician, wiring houses. He wired their whole house, which had used gas lighting. He could fix practically anything that was broken. He built a crystal radio set on which the family heard their first radio broadcasts. Seated at the breakfast table, the family passed around a headset and listened to music from KDKA in Pittsburgh, including a young Kate Smith. Starling did the carving at their dinners, and on special occasions made fabulous ice cream in the big ice cream maker filled with chipped ice. His admirable patience and tolerance were demonstrated during one visit when grandchildren Don and Lois helped out by trimming the serrated edges from stamps in his renowned philatelic collection.

Florence Dann was a twin, (with sister Grace), one of ten children of Jesse W. Dann and Charlotte Ann Mumford. She was short and sturdy and very kind, and she always wore a pretty dress, and baked delicious cinnamon buns for breakfast. Friday was market day and Florence always bought roast beef and fish. Her Sunday dinner roast beef and oven roasted potatoes were unforgettable, and relatives were often invited (including Uncle Percy and Aunt Ella and Aunts Lois, Charlotte, and Editha). Holiday dinners were wonderful to remember, as were everyday meals. Nowhere could her codfish balls be matched, and her potato salad assured the success of a picnic. At summer's end, the dining room sideboard bulged with the jelly she made. Grandma Waddell was also a good cook, famous for her pies, and she helped with the canning. The girls learned the art of quilting from her and a large quilting frame was set up in the spare bedroom, on which many a beautiful quilt was made. Jane was special to her, since both Jane's first and middle names were from Grandma's maiden name (Mary Jane Elliott). Many of the girls' clothes were Florence's handiwork, and she belonged to a Sewing Circle most of her life, heading the Sewing Guild of the church, which made items for their annual bazaar.

Florence had studied piano at Oberlin (a year or two before going to Ohio State) and played beautifully. She no doubt supervised Jane's piano practice. She was the pianist of the three daughters and took two years of piano lessons. The teacher taught four pieces a year which the students had to learn perfectly for the recital. Jane played well after only two years of instruction, but regretted not learning to sight read music.

Nice birthday parties for the three girls featured taffy pulls and playing "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" and "Musical Chairs". Frequent evening reading aloud of stories from The Saturday Evening Post were special treats for the trio. Both the parents were quiet and gentle and were ever-present if help of any kind were needed, at any time!

There were four bedrooms at the Hoffman Avenue home, each with a gas fireplace. Esther had her own room; Jane and Charlotte Ann shared a bedroom. One night Charlotte Ann called out that something was in her bed. When they came to investigate the matter, they found a bat in the room; its removal required the rest of the night.

The neighboring houses were very close and there was a door to the narrow passageway between Waddell's and the house on the left. There was a dank basement and an attic with a hidden stairway, in search of which Don, Lois and Larry spent hours. It was from this attic that daring little Jane reportedly once exited a window and walked along the ledge, three stories up, and re-entered by another window. She often said later how foolish that was!

Things we remember about the house: beautiful woodwork; a big inviting front porch; front parlor with the piano; the beautiful staircase; stained glass window at the stair landing; big sliding doors with flip-out pulls; light switches with push buttons; a marble fireplace in each room; a living room closet full of toys and games; elegant dining room with hutch filled with cut-glass pieces; a pantry between dining room and kitchen with swinging doors (the pantry also served as Starling's photography darkroom); bedrooms off a long dark hallway; mellow light from a wall lamp over the phone table; bath tub standing on claw feet; and, all through the house, the rich scent of wood and polish.

The garage faced the alley behind the house. When Starling drove their first car home one day (an "Interstate"?) all the girls ran out excitedly to see. Starling scolded, "Don't ever run out in front of a car! Don't ever do that again!" The girls, according to Charlotte Ann, were taught to drive by their grandfather in his sedan, and once taught, they just drove! No driving test to pass and no license required. It was Grandpa who asked the blessing at meals. He also taught them to play chess and he was ambidextrous, writing clearly and identically with either hand. Grandma read from the Bible to him every night at bedtime.

Each Christmas, the girls' grandmother went down the long upstairs hall to wake all the girls. Breakfast always came first, before presents. It was served, not in the kitchen or the breakfast room, but in the dining room with a beautiful white damask tablecloth. Christmas stockings always had a tangerine in the toe. One early Christmas, at the Fairwood Avenue house, Starling made a dollhouse which he hid in the attic. All went upstairs on Christmas Day to find it, and celebrated Christmas there. Memorable were the frequent Christmas visits with Uncle Billy and Aunt Lucille from New York, or Uncle Ben and Aunt Elsie from Long Island. (Charlotte Ann recalls that Uncle Billy worked with Lee DeForest and was instrumental in the patent for sound/picture synchronization for the new talking picture industry.) The family went to Broad Street Presbyterian Church, where Jane later taught Sunday School. She played the part of Mary in a Christmas pageant and when it was over she gave a hugely audible sigh of relief, to the chagrin of the director. We still have the Bible presented to her in 1917.

The siblings were close in age and such good friends their Mother had to shoo them out to play with other children. They played all sorts of games like Parcheesi and Rook. (Perhaps Jane's love for Bridge was born then.) Also recalled were dominoes, checkers, Hearts, Old Maid, Quoits, Authors, Mahjong, Anagrams, Ping Pong, Charades, table croquet, Carom, and the Ouija board! They played hide and seek in the big house, and the favorite hiding place was the front closet. They enjoyed roller skating on the sidewalks and ice skating at Franklin Park. They played horseshoes, hopscotch, jump rope, and tag with the children in the neighborhood, and a grand game of "War" which involved lots of running; anyone caught would be imprisoned in a garage, to be hung up by the thumbs. Once Jane ran down Madison Avenue all the way to Broad Street before being caught and her catcher said, "You run well!" She was proud of the compliment. The next-door neighbor, Mrs. Smith, told the children not to skate in her driveway, so they didn't - except when Mrs. Smith was away. She had an electric car and took them riding once.

When the girls were about 8, 6, and 4 they visited Starling's brother Ben and Elsie Waddell in Long Island, NY, where they were house sitting a large home. Jane remembers the dumb waiter, which the girls discovered could be ridden once the shelves were removed. Elsie bought them swim outfits - blouse, shorts (to the knees), stockings, shoes, cap and water wings - and they learned to swim in Long Island Sound. Jane tried putting the water wings on her feet and her head went under. She became good at swimming and it would become her lifelong sport. Another vacation Jane remembered was to a retreat at Rocky Fork Creek in Greenfield, OH, owned by one of Starling's uncles. The home, called "Beechcliff", was built in 1912 by John Matthew Waddell and was donated to the Highlands Nature Sanctuary in 1996. There were big caves to explore (now the famous "Seven Caves") and Jane remembered swimming in the icy waters of the creek. An early vacation with Starling gave them an introduction to farm life (at Slough's farm near Pataskala, where they took in summer boarders). For a few weeks, they had the experience of feeding chickens, riding horses, playing in a haystack, and close contact with farm animals.

Jane walked to school on Madison Avenue with her friend Mary Simpson, who lived a block away. East High School (1921 -1925) was a mile away on Broad Street. Her best teacher was a math teacher who once sent a note home: "Jane could do better." But, Jane said, nothing came of it. Once when Jane was late getting back to school from lunch she slipped into the back row for study time. As the teacher was making her way to the back of the class, Jane was expecting imminent punishment, but the teacher said, "That's a pretty dress, Jane."

Jane's early work experience included the Lazarus Bake Shop (1925) and cashiering at the L'Amor Candy and Bake Shop (1926-1927). She attended Wooster College for two years (1925 - 1926), where she was on the swimming team as a freshman and sophomore. She then went to Ohio State University, where she joined the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and graduated in 1929 with a B.S. degree in Home Economics and a major in Institutional Management; she was a dietitian! Esther had graduated two years before, after having worked for the dean, and she traveled to Europe. It was about this time that Jane, who had been a swimmer all her life, says she swam across the Ohio River on a dare. Fortunately for all of us, she was successful!

Mother left a boyfriend, Fritz, when she went, with her new degree, to Knoxville, TN to work in the University of Tennessee cafeteria. There, she met Andrew Tarlington Hendrix, a young engineering professor. We think it was love at first sight. She confessed that she undercharged him when he came through the line. After working there for a year and living in the dorm, Jane returned to Columbus, and Andy followed close behind. He came to visit her and they decided to get married right then and there. When they went to get the marriage license, the office clerk, who knew the Waddells, called Jane's mother to congratulate her on the marriage of their daughter. Florence was in tears when Jane and Andy returned home, thinking they had eloped without even consulting her parents. The wedding was on December 30, 1931, in the parlor of the Hoffman Avenue house, (although the newspaper had announced it would be in the Broad Street Presbyterian Church), and she received her grandmother's diamond and ruby ring, which we still have.

Andy, born May 12, 1904 in Byington, TN, had worked summers between 1923 and 1931 at Stokely Bros. in Newport, as a carpenter in South Dakota, a draftsman at Fulton-Sylphon, Knoxville, and a mechanical engineer at Goodrich Rubber in Los Angeles. During the school years from 1925 to 1934 he was an instructor and an Assistant Professor in Engineering Drawing at the University of Tennessee, after which he became an Assistant Professor of Agricultural Engineering. He also earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering in 1925 and 1927 and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1930. One document lists his IQ about that time as 154.

The couple's first dwellings were on East Fifth Avenue and on Lenland Avenue in Knoxville. Don was born in January, 1933 and they moved that year to an orchard stone house which Andy built at the intersection of Washington Pike and Millertown Pike in east Knoxville. There was a cast iron, wood-burning stove in the kitchen, and a big copper tub for heating bath water. That house still stands. Lois was born at home in November, 1934, and Larry was born in August, 1936. Certain traits in at least one of the youngsters apparently inspired Andy to apply for a patent for a "child training device" aimed at discouraging insertion of fingers into mouths. Don attended first and second grades at Alice Bell School in 1939. He and Lois were occasionally caught eating coal in the cellar. There was a barn and a field of alfalfa for the cow, with whom Jane was not on friendly terms.

Andy built a second house of Tennessee marble with a slate roof on a beautiful site on Maloney Road in south Knoxville, to which they moved in 1940. Mary Alice was born (at Fort Sanders Hospital) in September, 1940. Don was in third grade at Mt. Olive School, with Miss Slover as his teacher. Jane suffered a torn knee ligament while cleaning a chicken house and had successful surgery. In 1941 the family moved to 101 West Whitaker Mill Road in Raleigh, NC, where Andy was Associate Professor and Associate Research Agricultural Engineer at N.C. State College. The year 1943 found the family at 314 East Thatch Street in Auburn, AL, where Andy was a U.S.D.A. Research Agricultural Engineer. That was followed by a three year stay at Airport Acres and related projects at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, VA. In 1946 Andy transferred to the Tennessee Valley Authority and the family moved back to the Maloney Road home, which, in the interim, had been rented to the Woods family (that name is now seen on much of the real estate in the area). Don, Lois, Larry and Mary Alice went to Young High School. Twins Ralph and Roger were born at the Fort Sanders Hospital in May, 1947.

Jane had to learn all about farming and taking care of a big household in a small house. There was always cooking, washing, ironing, cleaning, sewing, mending, planting, cultivating, picking, canning, freezing, tending chickens, house remodeling, and taking care of babies. Work was never done and there was not much time for leisure, although occasional breaks occurred when a favorite program was scheduled on the new medium - television! The children had perpetual chores which included picking up broken glass (left by the Woods) throughout the wooded areas, cutting down pigweed, grubbing sprouts from fencelines, breaking up marble blocks into driveway stone and milking the cow. Jane kept busy as a Cub Scout den mother for two years in the mid-fifties and was active in the Home Demonstration Club. Growing and marketing strawberries was a lucrative later project for her.

When TVA reorganized in 1953, Andy's position was eliminated and, after about a year of self-employment (including building a third house on Smallwood Drive) on the Maloney Road property, he then worked at Rutgers University (1954-1955, New Brunswick, NJ), commuting occasionally back to Knoxville. In 1955 he was employed by the USDA in Athens, GA and moved to 235 Habersham Drive there with Jane and the three youngest children. Jane was president of the Ag Engineering Wives Club for a year, worked from 1960 to 1968 as dietitian at the University of Georgia cafeteria, and also took up swimming again at their Olympic-size swimming pool, swimming a mile a day (a practice she continued in some measure until almost age 90). That period included a slipped disc in 1962 (swimming was instrumental in that recovery) and two mastectomies (1967 and 1968) for breast cancer, from which she also completely recovered. They made frequent trips back to Tennessee where Andy was building a fourth house on Fort Loudon Lake near Louisville. The twins were willing and able helpers in that project and share many fond memories of that time. They received Outstanding Achievement awards from Athens High School, became Eagle scouts, graduated with honors from Georgia Tech, and were co-op students and later employees of the National Security Administration in Maryland. Mary Alice earned a Rotary Foundation Fellowship involving a year of study at the University of Paris.

In 1966, Jane accompanied Andy to an ASAE meeting in Amhurst, MA, in a pickup truck which he had modified to serve as a camper. They continued the tour through Canada, visited Mary Alice in Ann Arbor, MI, where she was taking a short course, then enjoyed more visits with family on the return via Columbus, Oak Ridge, the Knoxville properties, and thence back to Athens. Usually parking the camper in the host's driveway, they professed to be more comfortable sleeping in it, with all their clothes handy, than accepting the host's invitation to join them inside. Another camper tour in 1968 took them to Mary Alice's June wedding (with Ralph and Roger) and then on through the Western United States (without the twins) to a visit with Larry's family in Anaheim, CA. On their return, they picked up the slides from almost two dozen rolls of film taken during the trip, having sent them ahead for processing.

Andy retired from the USDA in October 1967 and the family, once again, returned to Maloney Road. As usual, no complaints were heard from Jane. When Andy's prostate cancer was diagnosed, it had already metastasized; he had surgery in 1967, but died at St. Mary's Hospital in April 1970. It was a difficult time for Jane; her father had died in1965; a grandson, Andy Thomson Hendrix, in 1969; and her older sister, Esther, later in 1970. Her mother, Florence, died in 1974 at the age of 93. Her younger sister, Charlotte Ann, lived until 2002. Jane volunteered for the American Cancer Society (recording cancer patient data, for which she received a certificate from the UT hospital) and was instrumental in starting the Reach to Recovery program for mastectomy patients (1970-1976) in Knoxville, doing training in Kingsport, TN.

With her daughter, Lois Reedy, she enjoyed many comfortable trips in the Reedy's motor home, including one to the west coast in 1973 with visits with Mary Alice and the Columbus relatives on the return. Jane gradually learned more about finances and became much more independent than she had been while married, but the Maloney Road property became a burden. One of her projects there was the planting of one thousand lob lolly pine trees. After Larry and family moved into the Maloney Road home with her in 1976, helping with the tasks of maintenance, she moved from the farm to a duplex on Garrison Road in Karns in 1979, near Gray-Hendrix Road and the old Hendrix home place. [The marble Maloney Road house was demolished overnight by a later owner and a new house was built on the property.] She started the Karns Bridge Club that year and then worked as a volunteer dispatcher for the Karns Volunteer Fire Department and read for Recording for the Blind as well (1980-1993) and continued swimming in the Oak Ridge pool. In 1983 she took a bus tour of Nova Scotia; in 1988, a Hawaiian vacation with friend Eva Jeffers; and in 1991, with daughter Mary Alice Beckman, she toured Paris and Switzerland! She continued to enjoy bridge, (especially duplicate), reading, needlework (especially counted cross stitch), crossword puzzles, cryptograms, and Scrabble. Line dancing was an enjoyable diversion, but hip pain cut that activity short. In 1994 she "totaled" her '87 Oldsmobile Firenza (undoubtedly due to excessive speed of the offending car which came over the limited-sight-distance hill) and promptly bought a new '94 Olds Cutlass Ciera.

Jane's hip pain led to a left hip replacement by Dr. Covino at St. Mary's in 2000 (her internist, Dr. Amy Bentley, having vouched for her being "a young 92"). She was nominated for the Covenant Platinum Award in 2000, 2008, and 2010 for her accomplishments and her inspiration to other seniors. Ten days before her 100th birthday in 2008, she broke the other hip in a fall (on returning from a bridge party) and successfully underwent repair surgery by Dr. Jackson and rehab therapy at NHC, Farragut. She made it to her birthday party (in a wheel chair) at the Beaver Ridge United Methodist Church, but the difficulties of living alone at Garrison Road, after a series of visits from the children, prompted her to move to assisted living facilities at Atria Weston Place on Lake Brook Boulevard in Knoxville in April 2008.

Her positive attitude, her determination to keep healthy, and her willingness to try new things at Atria were an inspiration to many people there. She enjoyed a spectacular 103rd birthday party provided by Atria, but decided that was enough, losing interest in reading, Scrabble, and even sugar-free chocolates! On the first Monday in April 2011, she was admitted to hospice care, moved to a room closer to the dining room (the walk was becoming a chore), and went to a party for new Atria residents (although she slept through it - sitting straight up in her chair, as usual). The following day she became unresponsive and was moved that night to the Mercy Resident Hospice facility. She passed away painlessly and peacefully at 1:20 pm on Wednesday April 6, 2011, with a son, a daughter, a long-time friend and the hospice nurses present.

Jane was a member of Beaver Ridge United Methodist Church in Karns for 32 years, where she had been active in Sunday School and Senior Beavers. A memorial service was held for her there April 9, 2011 and she was buried April 10 at Highland Memorial Gardens in Knoxville, next to Andy.