Texas native Jane Glenn spearheaded community projects in New Kensington over 60 years

On a Sunday afternoon in March 1958, a Texas woman sitting outside a coffee shop in New Orleans caught the eye of a man from Leechburg. Before too long, she found herself in New Kensington.

Jane Glenn arrived in New Kensington newly wedded to that Leechburg man — James Glenn — in 1960. In the decades that followed, she showed her dedication to her adopted home as a believer in books, a lover of animals and a planter of trees.

With her husband earning enough as a car dealer, Jane Glenn didn’t need to work. She raised their daughter, Holly, and son, Ben.

“That wasn’t enough for her,” James “Jim’ Glenn said. “She wanted to contribute to the community. She was probably the biggest and best volunteer the city of New Kensington ever had. I’m not exaggerating saying that.”

Jane Watson Glenn died Thursday, Feb. 3. She was 84.

A native of San Antonio, Jane Glenn and her sister were attending college in New Orleans. James Glenn, a former Army artillery officer, was working there for Domino Sugar.

After spending that Sunday afternoon in the French Quarter, Jim Glenn said, he was driving back to his apartment when he passed the cafe and spotted Jane and her blonde hair.

“The sun glinted off her hair and I caught this in the corner of my eye,” he said. “I hit the brakes on my car like a lightning bolt went down through me. I walked up to these girls and asked if I could have a cup of coffee with them.

”It was one of those meant-to-be kind of things.”

They married in 1959 and moved from New Orleans to New Kensington six months later, in early 1960, so Jim could take over his father’s Buick dealership.

He retired and sold the business after more than 30 years, and the couple moved to neighboring Lower Burrell. But they always felt connected to New Kensington.

Among Jane Glenn’s efforts were helping get the Peoples Library of New Kensington to larger, more accessible quarters; leading the effort to replace the city’s makeshift dog pound with a new shelter that became Animal Protectors of Allegheny Valley; and beautification efforts including the city’s Shade Tree Commission and the Pucketos Garden Club.

“She didn’t want any credit for any of this. She was very low key,” her husband said. “When she took on a project, she was very determined. She really worked at it and she got it done.”

Jim said his wife was shocked to find the city’s library in a basement — inaccessible to the elderly and handicapped.

Not knowing anything about public libraries, she earned a master’s degree in library science from the University of Pittsburgh by taking night classes over three years.

Elected to the library board and soon its president, she oversaw raising $300,000 to buy and refurbish a former supermarket for the library. That was despite being told it wouldn’t be possible to raise that much money in New Kensington.

Library Director David Hrivnak said Jane Glenn was one of three board members who interviewed him for his job in 2001.

“She viewed a strong library as important in a strong community,” Hrivnak said. “She was very instrumental in the library being what the library is today.”

After New Kensington fired its dog catcher, Jim said his wife did the job for two years as a volunteer. Finding the city’s kennel “entirely inappropriate,” in the mid-1980s, she sought grants from the state and raised money locally that led to the no-kill shelter on Linden Avenue.

Animal Protectors remained there until 2020, when it moved to a former school on Church Street.

“She was just one of those special people that related to a lot of people,” said Phyllis Framel, former board president of Animal Protectors. “She really felt that she could make the world, or her little corner of the world, a better place, and just went and did it.”

Jane Glenn was actively involved in the New Kensington Shade Tree Commission for more than four decades, getting grants that paid for planting hundreds of trees throughout the city, commission member Anthony Bruni said.

In addition to organizing teams of volunteers to plant trees, Bruni said Glenn made caring for and preserving mature trees a priority, and she did her best to prevent them from being removed.

“She would also make sure if a tree had to be pruned, or in the worst case cut down because of decay or damage, we had a second opinion from our state forester,” Bruni said. “Jane would insist that the work be done during a time of year that would not disrupt birds from making their nests.”

Glenn was also helpful in the Pucketos Garden Club, said Martha Sproul, a former president of the club who called her a friend. She didn’t mind getting her hands dirty, including in a garden outside the library.

“As much as we were together, I never knew until I read her obituary all that she did,” Sproul said. “In all our conversations, she never said, ‘I did this, I started that, I was part of this.’ Our conversations were about a lot of little things and how we could better the community.

“The world could sure use a lot more Jane Glenns.”

All services for Jane Glenn were private.