Jane Bell, 1917-2009

By Heather Lende

Longtime resident Jane Bell, 91, died Feb. 7 in the Juneau Pioneers Home of cancer. Friends and family will remember Bell for her energy, charm, and style.

“Jane always had her hair done, and always dressed like we learned to in business school in those days,” said friend Marge Ward. “She looked as good from the back as she did from the front.”

Ward worked for Bell at her business, Bell’s Store. “She was a good businesswoman, and a good boss. She was very easy to work for because she made you feel comfortable.”

Bell came to Haines in 1960 from California with husband Matt Bell, and soon opened Bell’s Store. Her love of flowers made it the town’s first florist shop. She also ran a sandwich shop. She was active in the Emblem Club, the American Legion Auxiliary and the Woman’s Club and was a member of the Port Chilkoot Bible Church and later joined the Pioneers, volunteered at the museum, and served on the boards of the Senior Citizens Center and the Haines Senior Village.

Bell kept a garden, painted, made ceramics, played bridge, and exercised daily. “You’d come in the house and she’d be standing on her head to get the blood flowing,” said Doris Bell, her daughter-in-law.

Jane Bell also drove snowmachines, fished, and accompanied her husband hunting and trapping, often from their places at both Dezadeash Lake and Chilkat Lake. She shot a mountain goat that is displayed in Bell’s Store. “She wasn’t faint-hearted when it came to the sight of blood,” Doris Bell said.

In summing up Bell’s impact on Haines, friend Beverley Jones said she showed up at events ranging from fundraisers at the Elks to Arts Council concerts and through her store donated to a range of community and school activities. “Jane was one of those people who promoted the town, and said you had to get out and do things, not just sit and watch it all go by.”

Charlotte Jane Lewis was born June 22, 1917 in Chicago. Her parents moved to Fremont, Neb. when she was two. They owned a dry goods store they lost in the Great Depression. Bell graduated from Fremont Senior High School in 1934, where she was in the drama, debate, and forensics club. Afterward, she went to California and got a job with the Navy in a program where civilians replaced workmen bound for action in WWII.

The man she replaced was Matt Bell. They married just after meeting and their first son was born in 1944. Matt Bell stayed in the Navy after the war and the family lived on bases around the country.

While stationed in southern California, the family bought a small farm, and Jane raised chickens, pigs, and cows. They bought a camper dealership nearby in the 1950s before Matt Bell retired from the Navy in 1959.

Son Clyde said his father came home one day announcing that everyone needed to pack up. “We figured we were going deer hunting. Then Dad said he meant really pack – “everything, we’re moving to Alaska.” They were on the road within the week, Jane driving a 1958 Chevy Impala pulling a 16-foot boat filled with household goods and Matt at the wheel of a camper towing a 30-foot trailer.

They pulled into town in May 1960. “Haines wasn’t much,” recalled Doris Bell. “I saw this caravan coming in, and Clyde’s sister was wearing all lavender – dress, shoes, socks, everything – we had never seen anything like it.”

After her husband died in 1981, Bell traveled the world with women friends. She rafted the Tatshenshini in her late seventies, and in her eighties cruised the Inside Passage on a friend’s boat. In 1995, at age 77, she appeared on the TV show “The Price is Right,” winning more than $5,000 in merchandise.

A heart attack and breast cancer precipitated the move to the Pioneer Home. “Jane had a radiant quality that she kept right up to the end,” said friend Tony Tengs.

Her parents, husband Matthew Bell, grandson Mathew Wayne Bell, two brothers and two sisters preceded her in death. Survivors include sons Robert of Sarasota, Fla., and Clyde and Doris of Haines; daughter Linda Ballou of Sherman Oaks, Calif.; sisters Audra May Larsen of Loveland, Colo., and Estelle Bunny of Phoenix; grandson Russ Bell of Haines, and many nieces and nephews.