Family photo 2025

At age 91, Jane Goodall passed away in Los Angeles while on a speaking tour. Knowing how much I admired Jane, my daughter was the first to text me the information. Remembrances have since flooded my inbox, with my favorites appearing in the New York Times and National Geographic. I’ve supported the Jane Goodall Institute for many years, believing as Jane did that positivity, hope, and action in small ways will contribute to a better world. The Institute is one of the largest nonprofit global research and conservation organizations, with offices in the US and 24 other countries. One of their programs, Roots and Shoots, began in 1991 and teaches conservation to young people in 75 countries.

I was surprised to read that she’d written 32 books! Pictured above are the three I have on my shelf. I’d written in the small paperback “1974” but I’d originally learned of Jane’s research life in my first anthropology course, taken in 1971, taught by Dr. William Maples at the University of Florida. Maples’ physical anthropology course, and Jane Goodall, inspired me to change my major to anthropology, and ultimately, to earn three degrees in the subject.

Finding “Through a Window” on my shelf, I discovered notes on the inside cover: “bought in Nairobi at Wilson Airport while waiting for the Air Kenya flight to Musiara Governors’ Camp at the Mara.” The second inscription: “18/6/94 at the end of a 3-week trip to Uganda and Kenya for Family Health International AIDSCAP.” Perhaps I never finished reading it; there’s a folded corner on page 153. Although I never worked at Jane’s Gombe Stream research center, I did follow my dreams to Africa eventually.

In May this year, I finished reading “The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times,” published in 2021. Truly trying times, indeed. She’ll always inspire me as I navigate this Third Thirty chunk of years.

RIP, Jane; you will be missed but never forgotten.

Family photo 2022: the Jane Goodall Barbie doll