Greensburg Daily News, Greensburg, IN

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  • Joe Hornaday

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February 18, 2009

A Comforting Life Wrapped In A Warm Quilt

Joe Hornaday

Four children, dozens of quilts and more than 70 years later, local resident Jane Keith has managed to spend all of her life in Greensburg.

Keith was born inside a home on E. Main Street. A few years later, she graduated from high school in 1950. Following her graduation, Keith went straight to work alongside her new husband.

“You might say that my husband was a 49er. He was in the class of ‘49,” Keith mused.

With a happy marriage under her belt, Keith was ready to take on adulthood. She began work at a little local grocery store that no longer exists today.

“It was one of those little neighborhood grocery stores that you don’t see anymore,” Keith said.

Trailing her stint as a cashier, Keith was ready to begin a family. When her first child, Anne, came along, Keith made the decision to become a stay-at-home mom. Jane Keith and her husband Maurice followed Anne with daughter Linda and son Gregg. She stayed near her family until her youngest son Brian, the final of four, began his junior year of high school.

By the time Keith was ready to rejoin the workforce, the local grocery store had closed. She then went to work at the license branch and then it was on to Taff Furniture.

In the middle of the 1970s, Jane Keith decided to open up her own shop in downtown Greensburg, a store that would deal in quilts and other fabrics. Her lifelong interest in sewing and quilting made going to work every day a pleasure.

“Now, I hope to get back to it when I get to feeling better,” Keith said.

Keith ran the shop for just under 10 years before moving on.

“When my husband retired, he said ‘I think you need to get out,’” Keith explained. “We wanted to travel, so we did. We took a lot of trips.”

The Keiths traveled to one of Maurice’s favorite places, Branson, Mo., several times before he passed away just under two years ago.

“Once was enough for me, but he loved the shows,” she said.

No matter where she was working or what she was doing, Jane Keith always found time for her family.

“We took a lot of good trips as a family, too,” she said. “As soon as school was over for the kids, we’d hit the road.”

The vacations took the Keith family all over, but most of the trips ended up in the state of Florida.

“When we were there, we did the usual Florida stuff,” Keith said.

The “usual stuff,” Keith elaborated, included swimming in the ocean, sampling the local restaurants and visiting friends who had made their homes in the Sunshine State.

Now, as Jane Keith hangs out in her apartment at the CrownPointe Senior Living Community, she can look at many of the quilts she has fashioned over the years that now adorn the living space.

“I’ve always had an interest in sewing and quilts,” Keith explained. “It seemed to be the ‘in thing’ at the right time.”

Her seven grandchildren each have a baby quilt, made when they were infants.

“I haven’t sold any for a long time. I’ve been just giving them away to the kids and so on,” Keith said. “Each quilt has a them to it, like a teddy bear. My two married grandkids each got a quilt when they got married.”

When she isn’t enjoying her quilts, Jane Keith has found the time to start organizing a canasta group at CrownPointe.

One of the items in Keith’s apartment is a coverlet that marks the 50th anniversary of the marriage between she and her husband Maurice.

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