Jane Macaulay Petty

Jane Macaulay Petty, age 93, was born March 5, 1926 in Greenville, South Carolina, to the Reverend William Macaulay and Margery Moore, and the family later lived in Tampa, Florida. Her surviving siblings, William and Winifred, live in North Carolina.

After graduating from Erskine College (South Carolina), Jane moved to Decatur, Georgia, where she earned her Master’s Degree at Emory University, and enjoyed a 30-year career as a beloved English teacher at Murphy High School, and then at Georgia State University.  Jane was a pianist, writer and poet who became an accomplished bird watcher. She raised her daughters, Mary and Nan, and later her grandson, William, to appreciate music and the natural world and to fight for social justice.

Even as she lived with dementia for the past ten years, Jane remained engaged in life and with others in the world. She was a devoted coffee drinker and lover of cats. She was funny and kind and remained forever the teacher, reading to and lecturing others with perfect grammar and diction. She died in the Silverado Community in Bellingham, Washington Tuesday, February 25, 2020. Jane will be missed by her family, past communities of friends and colleagues and by all the wonderful caregivers who surrounded her in recent years.