
Nancy Jane Stephens was born June 1, 1925, in Sierra Blanca, Texas. She spent her final days surrounded by her family at home in Burbank, California and passed away peacefully at the age of 95 on the morning of January 10, 2021.
At age 83, when asked to sum up her life in six words or less Jane responded, “Been There, Done That, Worth It.”
Jane grew up along the Rio Grande border between Texas and Mexico, 88 miles south of El Paso, in a small railroad town serving cattle ranchers, the daughter of Johnny Philomel Cox Stephens and Grover Cleveland Stephens and sister to Wyman, Grover, and James Stephens, all of whom predeceased her. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish, at the University of Texas, Austin. While attending UT Austin, Jane met her future husband, Robert Ellsworth Shanks, who was stationed there for naval flight training. After her brother Wyman was killed in April 1945, aboard the USS Mobile in the South Pacific, and her previously arranged May wedding date was canceled, Jane boarded a train to travel alone across country to Boston where the couple married in the Harvard University Chapel on June 16, 1945. After the war, the couple returned briefly to Texas, before settling in California, where Robert, known as Bob to friends and family, finished his schooling at USC, earning master and doctorate degrees in Education.
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