On Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, our mother Janice “Jan” Altick Jurgensen passed away at Broadview Christian Science Nursing Facility in Los Angeles, California, where she had been living since August 2022.

Her beloved husband Robert (Bob) Woolston Jurgensen had passed away in June 2019, just shy of their 66th wedding anniversary.

Jan was born in 1933 in Seattle and spent her early childhood in Washington State. The family later moved to Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, where she attended a Quaker Friends school.

When Jan was a junior in high school, her parents moved to San Francisco. Jan joined them after staying with family friends in Pennsylvania until her high school graduation. She then attended Stanford University, where she received her B.A. in political science.

It was at Stanford that she met the love of her life and husband-to-be Bob Jurgensen. Bob and Jan married in San Francisco in September 1953 after their junior year and graduated from Stanford in 1954.

After some time spent at the army bases Fort Benning (now Fort Moore) and Fort Ord (now Fort Ord National Monument) as part of Bob’s military service, they settled in Pasadena, where Bob grew up and where the flagship store of the Jurgensen’s grocery store chain was located.

Bob worked for a number of years in the family business, eventually becoming president. Then, in 1974, the family moved to the Santa Ynez Valley, where Bob became the business manager, as well as a teacher and baseball coach, at Dunn School.

Devoted to her husband and to nurturing and raising their four children, Jan was also a devoted and lifelong student of Christian Science. She was active in the Christian Science churches in Pasadena and Solvang and served in many church positions over the years.

An avid reader, she also took part in several book clubs, as well a variety of other activities, including walking groups and political clubs.

She and Bob (mostly Bob!) were keen golfers, often vacationing near golf courses. They attended plays and concerts, played bridge, traveled in the United States and abroad, and enjoyed many a lively dinner party with good friends.

Hawaii was their most beloved travel destination, and in later years they always went to the Big Island, sharing their vacations with their grown children and their families.

Jan was a gentle soul and a humble, modest woman, but she had a robust passion for God, her family and her country. Her integrity and character were forged and born out of her devout faith in God.

Her journey of over nine decades on this plane has finished. She demonstrated courage, dignity and kindness all the way to the end of that journey.

Though we may not see or touch her physically anymore, she has forever touched us with her love, and we perpetually see her in all her shining light and grace.

And just as we among the family are her children, so too is she an eternal child of God and divine love, and we carry that eternal love forward in our own blessed journeys.

We could say she is in God’s hands now, but as she taught us, she was always in God’s hands. We think of her now as reunited with our father, and they are among still waters and green pastures, and surely she is dwelling in the house of the Lord forever. And we remember some of her favorite spiritual and biblical passages:

“Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need” and “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

If our father was the family’s rock, our mother was its heart. She demonstrated pure, unselfish lovingkindness in all that she said and did — not just to her family but to everyone — and through her words and example she taught us, her children, how to love others.

We were, and will continue to be, so very blessed by her presence in our lives.

Jan is survived by her children Ken Jurgensen (Mary Siegmund), Doug Jurgensen (whose wife Debi passed in 2023), Lynn Jurgensen, and Neil Jurgensen; grandchildren Jackie Jurgensen Milligan (Joseph Milligan), Keith Jurgensen, and Claire Jurgensen (Doug and Debi); Emma Jurgensen (Ken and Mary); and her great-grandchildren Finley (Jackie and Joseph), and Emerie Faith (Keith).

Mom, we love you forever, “a bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck!”