Jane Slaughter of Southampton Dies January 23

Jane Slaughter of Southampton died on January 23 of complications from a fall at home on January 6. She was 97.

She was born on July 13, 1926, in Dayton, Ohio, to Nell and William Neill.

Her father, an inventor, worked in a think tank for NCR Co. Her mother has the distinction of having known the Wright brothers when they ran a bicycle shop in Dayton before they achieved fame as the “first in flight.”

Studying piano as a child, she played in the Dayton Orchestra as a teenager.

She later met George Slaughter while he was studying architecture at Ohio State. Shortly thereafter, “a date that will live in infamy,” December 7, 1941, changed their lives dramatically. She left Ohio State to concentrate on the war effort at home, while he joined the U.S. Navy, and became an officer in the Sea Bees unit with civil engineering training.

The couple married in 1947. As she had worked for several attorneys, she typed her husband’s master’s thesis while he was working for the TVA in Knoxville, Tennessee. Their peripatetic lives moved them to Baton Rouge, where he taught at LSU before moving to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where their first son, Neill, was born in 1951. They quickly moved to Annapolis, when he accepted a teaching position at the U.S. Naval Academy.

In 1954, their son Scott was born, followed by Dean in 1955. The family relocated to Atlanta in 1956 for him to complete his Ph.D. in hydrology and fluid mechanics at Georgia Tech. Again, she typed her husband’s complicated thesis, while raising three rambunctious boys.

Her husband then taught civil engineering for three decades at Georgia Tech before retiring in 1984. As all three sons studied at the University of Georgia in the early 1970s, she excelled in real estate, making the “Million Dollar Club” for Harry Norman Realty.

From 1984-1995, the couple lived in the Amelia Island Plantation Club, playing golf, riding bikes, walking the beach and traveling abroad. He was lured back to Maryland to work for their son, Dean, a building contractor/land developer.

Upon her husband’s death, she moved to Roswell, Georgia, before moving to Southampton in 2013. She read voraciously, played Bridge, became computer literate, attended classical concerts and art exhibitions with her son, Neill, who taught art and art history at Long Island University.

She is survived by her son Neill and Jeannette; her son Dean and Patricia; five grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

A memorial service is planned for Friday, February 2, at 11 a.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Southampton.