Jane Ann Wills
After a courageous four-year battle with Stage 4 cancer, Jane Ann Jablonski Wills ended her suffering and met her savior, Jesus Christ, on Good Friday, April 18, 2025. A devout Catholic her entire life, Jane passed holding her special rosary that she received from selling religious magazines as a child. She was born and raised in Ashley, Pennsylvania, a small close knit coal mining community, near Wilkes-Barre. Jane was extremely proud of her Polish heritage. In fact, she only spoke Polish until she started school. She was valedictorian of her class at Ashley High School, and the first in her immediate family to attend college, graduating with an AB in Biology from Wilkes University in 1961.
Following college, Jane moved to the Washington, D.C. area where in 1965 she met the love of her life, Bob Wills, a newly minted Marine Lieutenant from Atchison, Kansas. Jane had originally planned a big family wedding at Holy Family R.C. Church in Sugar Notch, Pennsylvania. However, the Vietnam War intervened, and Bob received orders to ship out. Instead, they were married at the Hillside Chapel at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. She was married to Bob for nearly 47 years before he passed away in 2013. As a marine wife, Jane lived at Camp Pendleton, California; Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Quantico, Virginia; Hacienda Heights, California outside of Los Angeles; 29 Palms, California, in the Mojave Desert; and she finally moved to Springfield, Virginia, in 1979 when Bob was stationed at the Marine Corps Headquarters in D.C.
When Bob retired from the Marines in 1982 and became Chief of Security at Hollins College, the family moved to Daleville, VA, where Jane resided until her death. She always said the Marine Corps wifes theme song was "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden". Shortly before she passed, Jane said out of the blue "I always knew Id only have boys". Hopefully, it was a blessing even though she never had the daughter she desired.
Besides being a dedicated homemaker, Jane worked for CIBA Pharmacology, doing research testing on heart drugs by performing surgery on white mice. She also worked for the FDA in the D.C. area in its adverse reaction department. After she moved to Daleville, she performed her most important and fulfilling work, finding employment for the physically and intellectually challenged in the Roanoke Valley on behalf of Goodwill Industries until her retirement.
Jane was a kind and gentle woman who only saw the good in people. Her other important vocation was the work she did on behalf of her church and faith. Jane and Bob were founding members of the first catholic church in Botetourt County, The Church of the Transfiguration in Fincastle. In the early 1990s, she and Bob went door to door to recruit parishioners and raise funds to build The Church of the Transfiguration.
Over the years, Jane was a eucharistic minister, head of the Young at Heart Group at church, involved with the Pastoral Care Committee, and taught CCD or Catholic Sunday School, for years.
Jane truly reaped what she had sown as one of her former C.C.D. students, Nadia Bishop, provided excellent and compassionate hospice care to her at the end of her life. Additionally, Jane received comfort and aid from her special church friends, Mary Fochtman; Tom and Fay Poulin; Jennifer Cassell; and Jean Mistele, in her final months. We also would like to thank all of the numerous caretakers, physicians, family and friends who gave her moral support and medical treatment over the course of her final illness.
In particular, our family would like to thank her close friend and caretaker, the late Kathy Hammond and her family; and her oncologist, Dr. Shannon Armbruster, who treated her primary cancer; and Dr. Bret Adams, who treated her brain tumor, successfully, for many years.
Jane was preceded in death by her father, Walter A. B. Jablonski, who was a coalminer, ran a power plant, and served in the Navy in World War I. Her mother, Ann Czajkowski Jablonski, was a loving homemaker and devoted servant of the Lord as well; and her granddaughter, Annalia Meredith Wills.
Jane is survived by the following: her brother, Walter L. Jablonski and his wife, Rosemary of Chantilly, VA; her son, Stephen R. Wills of Daleville and his children, Jackson T. Wills and Augusta C. Wills; her son, John G. Wills of Daleville, his wife, Christi H. Wills and daughter, Reese Wills; and her son, Michael E. Wills of Killingworth, CT and his wife, Suzanne H. Wills and children Ryan J. Wills, Matthew D. Wills, Tessa A. Wills, and Reese E. Wills.
Finally, Jane was an avid collector of eagles and sunflowers, the state flower of Kansas, Bobs home state. There was not a room in her house that did not contain multiple pictures or artwork of eagles and sunflowers.
We fervently believe it was on eagles wings that she was lifted to Heaven for her reunion with Bob and her savior, Jesus Christ.
May she rest in peace and her life be an exemplar for us all.
Id z Bogiem faithful servant Jane.
