TOPSHAM – Jane Hachey passed peacefully on Monday morning, Feb. 8, 2021, at the Governor King memory care center in Topsham where she had resided since November 2019, owing to Covid -associated dementia.

Born in December 1938 to Lyyli and Lawrence Whitman of West Paris, Jane was their only child when her father died in 1943 compelling her mother to seek employment in Lewiston. Jane next resided at a dairy farm in Hebron with caring grandparents, Finnish emigrants who spoke little English. Jane’s mother’s brother, Wilho Pulkkinen,“Uncle Billy, ”managed the farm and was of much help to Jane during that transition.

Jane’s mother remarried in 1950 and Jane, aged 12, moved to Lewiston to live with her. Having attended a one-room schoolhouse in Hebron that incorporated all eight elementary grades, Jane graduated from Lewiston High in 1957, ranking in the top tier of her class as a National Honor Society student.

Jane married Thomas Hachey of Lewiston in 1962 and the couple moved to New York where Tom pursued Ph.D studies in history while Jane worked for a consulting firm and took business courses at Queens College. Upon her husband’s appointment to the Marquette University history faculty in 1964 Jane matriculated for an associate degree in computer science at Wisconsin Technical College in Waukesha, Wisconsin, graduating with honors before pursuing a successful career as a real estate broker. During her seven years with one of Waukesha County’s major realty firms she twice won the leading salesperson award.

As the national economy faltered in 1980 Jane enrolled at Mount Mary College in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin where, in 1984, she would obtain a bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude. Upon learning how entry level MBAs so often entailed moving, Jane abandoned her idea of seeking any advanced business degree and pivoted to education, taking the required courses for teaching accreditation in the State of Wisconsin. She continued her studies even while teaching elementary school in suburban Milwaukee and earned a Master’s Degree in Education at Marquette University in 1989. Jane would teach until the year 2000 when her husband, then dean of the college of arts and sciences at Marquette, accepted an endowed chair as university professor of history at Boston College.

Now retired from teaching Jane found more time for the neglected gardening and reading she so loved. Always an inveterate traveler Jane, with husband Tom, spent several summers, and one Fall semester, doing research in London, Edinburgh, and Belfast. Overseas trips in more recent times involved different assignments, at differing times of the year, mostly to Dublin. Jane never wearied of the travel to Europe, journeying there some 31 times between 1966 and 2015. The Hacheys came home to Maine in 2016, settling into a splendid home at The Highlands retirement community in Topsham.

Children were always special to Jane, all the more so as the couple had never been blessed with any. But she often was heard to remark how fortunate she had been during each of her years teaching when she could, and did, look forward to inheriting some thirty new children. Endowed with a temperament that ensured lifelong friendships, ever considerate to both the kind and the obdurate, Jane was a delight to encounter and her cheerful and obliging spirit will be sadly missed but long remembered by the many who knew and loved her.

Jane is survived by her husband Tom, and by her sister-in-law, Elaine Freeman, and her husband Thomas; and by her sister-in -law Anne Foley, and her husband Edward; and by Linda Leiva, formerly married to Tom’s brother, the late James Hachey; together with twelve grand nephews and nieces, and thirteen great grand nephews and nieces.

Owing to exigencies posed by the Covid 19 virus there will not be any visitation or service conducted at the Pinette Dillingham & Lynch Funeral Home. Instead, a graveside memorial service will held on a still to be determined date later this Spring. Condolences and/or memories can be sent c/o http://www.lynchbrothers.com.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Jane’s memory may be made to Androscoggin Home Healthcare Hospice at

15 Strawberry Ave.,

Lewiston, ME 04042