Jane Lucilla (McBrien) Gadaire, 91, passed away August 31, 2022 at Buckley Healthcare Center in Greenfield, MA. She was born on October 12, 1930 in Lynn, MA to Alice O. (Armstrong) and William F. McBrien, Sr. She is survived by her son Mark and his wife Blair (Santoro) of Huntington, NY, her cherished grandchildren Peyton and Chase Gadaire, her daughter Janice and husband Daniel Fleuriel of Shelburne Falls, MA, and many cousins, nieces, nephews, friends, and colleagues. She was predeceased by her brothers, William F., Jr. and Owen E. McBrien, and her husband of 52 years Raymond A. Gadaire.

Jane grew up in Nahant, MA, and cherished for life her memories of immediate and extended family, friends and neighbors, school and community celebrations, services and Sunday school at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Lynn, Girl Scouts, piano lessons, summer days at the ocean, and visits to Revere Beach and Wonderland Amusement Park. Despite the Depression and the town’s World War II fortification activity, Jane remembered her Nahant years as filled with the enjoyments of youth and loving family.

Jane attended Lynn English High School and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she was a member of the synchronized swimming team and the Gamma Eta Chapter of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Romance Languages. She taught French and Latin for two years at Marshfield (MA) High School, where she saw that some students, despite being verbally very bright, could not easily put words on paper. Jane was someone who always wanted to find out the answers to life’s important questions, and the question of what caused those students’ challenges stayed with her. After Marshfield High School, she took a position teaching Latin and French at Bridgton Academy in Bridgton, Maine. There she met history teacher, coach, and vice principal Raymond A. Gadaire. They were married August 12, 1956 in Harrison, Maine.

After Raymond took a position teaching and coaching at Milton (MA) High School, they moved to an apartment in nearby Mattapan, where they met the first of several lifelong friends and bridge partners. They bought their first home in Brockton, where they raised their children Mark and Janice, making lifelong friends in their neighborhood of young couples raising families and taking full advantage of the city’s high-quality educational and recreational resources (including swimming at D.W. Field Park and playing tennis as a family). Each year after school let out, the family vacationed for a week or two at “Minerva,” a cottage at the Camp Brookline Housekeeping Cottages on Highland Lake in Bridgton, Maine, and for many years old Academy friends would visit, sitting on the lakefront porch or in front of the fireplace and reminiscing with “Jane and Ray” about all their old funny stories.

Having grown up knowing the value of family connections, Jane made sure her children got to know their relatives on both sides. The family enjoyed visits to her childhood home in Nahant where her parents still lived, to Raymond’s extended family in Brookfield, MA, to Richmond, Virginia to see her brother Owen, to New Jersey to see her brother Bill and family, and to Nova Scotia to meet her Armstrong relatives with whom she had spent many memorable childhood summers. During her years as a homemaker, Jane nurtured her love of working with children through involvement in the Girl Scouts, and her love of learning through sewing and art lessons that resulted in finely crafted clothing (from Barbie dresses to kilts to prom dresses and a bridesmaid outfit) and beautiful paintings (mostly of her beloved ocean).

When her children got older, Jane pursued the answer to that question from her early teaching days, becoming a certified teacher of specific language disability for the Brockton Schools and earning a Master's of Education in reading and special education at Bridgewater State College. During her career of sixteen years, she helped many children learn how to work with their language disabilities to succeed in school and life, and helped their parents advocate for their child’s needs. Jane never underestimated her students’ academic potential because of their challenges with how language works, no matter if a student asked how a boneless chicken walked, or concluded that “bus” is spelled “BAT” after seeing these letters on every city bus, or walked up to her with chair dragging behind after tying his shoelace to it to remind himself that she had said to stay in his seat. And she never underestimated how much parents cared about their child’s school success, having seen parents take unpaid time from work or walk miles to attend individualized-education-plan and parent-teacher meetings. The seeds of her efforts and caring bore fruit in many ways, and she cherished her memories of the successes she was fortunate to know of, from the student who thanked her at the end of one year and told her she’d never said “thank you” to anyone before, to the student who called her while in high school to ask her to advocate for the study approach they had determined worked best, to the strides made by a student who went on to own a popular neighborhood pizza business, to parents who saw her out and about and made a point to thank her once again for the difference she had made for their child.

In retirement, Jane pursued interests old and new. She stayed active in the Alpha Delta Kappa International Honorary Organization for Women Educators (ADK), Massachusetts Mu Chapter, of which she was a founding member. She delved into family genealogy, leading to her membership in The Mayflower Society and the Deborah Sampson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Her DAR activities included holding the chapter regent post for a year, facilitating the annual student essay contest, and taking part in events for veterans at the Brockton VA Medical Center. With family and friends, she enjoyed events in Boston and travels to Florida, Las Vegas, Maine, Nova Scotia, Europe, and the Caribbean. She often invited friends and family for meals, card games, and Christmas and other parties, and was always happy to play the piano for sing-alongs. She volunteered for a time with the Boys and Girls Club in Brockton and with ministries at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brockton, and enjoyed taking water exercise classes at the Brockton YMCA with friends old and new.

Jane spent her last several years in her “country apartment” in the Shelburne Falls home of daughter Janice and son-in-law Dan, surrounded by the family pictures and heirlooms she had treasured from childhood. Here, the small-town girl in her surfaced, enjoying her new community through walks on the Bridge of Flowers, Shelburne Falls Military Band concerts, the July 4th Shelburne Falls parade and Town of Greenfield fireworks, and local fairs and festivals. She nurtured her love of classical music and learning, attending the Old Deerfield Sunday Afternoon Concert Series, the Mohawk Trail Concerts, “The Brick Church” Music Series, and lectures on local history at Historic Deerfield and Greenfield Community College. While she always missed the sounds, air, and open vistas of the ocean, she maintained her love of being in or near the water through water therapy classes at the Greenfield YMCA, afternoons by the lake at the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) State Forest in Goshen, MA, and watching the waters flow and birds fly by at the Deerfield and Connecticut rivers. Her love of spending time with others shone through in her participation in YMCA water and Bones and Balance classes, dinners and holidays with son-in-law Dan’s family, Scrabble games and socializing with neighbors and other new friends, cooking nightly meals, preparing traditional holiday meals to be eaten around the table laid out with her favorite heirloom tablecloths and dinnerware, finding new meal and dessert recipes for visiting family and friends, and playing games during her son’s family visits. Jane was always grateful for the warm welcome she received when she attended worship services at The Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew in Greenfield, whose organ music, liturgy, and architecture made her feel close once again to her childhood church. Jane grew increasingly interested in and concerned by the social and political turbulence in the news her last few years, and when Reverend Heather J. Blais visited her in Buckley and asked if there was anything she wanted to pray for, Jane replied, “the state of the world.”

At Jane’s request, there are no calling hours. A service for family will be held in the spring or summer of 2023 at Greenlawn Cemetery in Nahant, followed by committal of ashes. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her memory to a charity of choice.