Jane Gillespie Leddy passed away peacefully on August 12, 2019 at Heritage Park Nursing Home in Carbondale, Colorado after 95 years of an amazing life. She was Born in San Francisco May 21, 1924, but was never a city girl, joining the Sierra Club at an early age and learning to ride horses.
She attended Stanford University beginning in 1942, but interrupted her studies to join the Navy Waves in 1944. At the end of WWII she returned to Stanford where she met John Thomas Leddy, and they married shortly after her graduation. They moved to Eureka, California, where John practiced law, and they had two children. Their stay was cut short when John was killed in an automobile accident in 1954. Jane then began to really express her independence when she moved to Kitzbuhel, Austria, with two young children, where she learned to ski and loved it. When she moved back to the US, a friend said to her “if you loved Kitzbuhel, you will really love Aspen,” and she moved the family to Aspen in 1958. While in Aspen, she taught skiing at Stein Erikson’s Ski School at Aspen Highlands and modeled for Obermeyer.
In 1962, she moved to Denver where both children attended high school. She became a ski-racing Mom for both children, driving around the Rockies following the ski racing circuit. She married William Thurston in 1966, and the two divorced three years later. When the children were both away in college, she moved back to Aspen, met and married Robert Wallace Andrews, who was also a Stanford alumnus then living in Snowmass. Bob preceded her in death in 2009.
She loved family, the wilderness, and music, especially jazz piano which she played into her 90’s. She belonged to the Christian Science Church for most of her life and found great support, special friends, and spent many hours in quiet study.
She is survived by her two children, Chris Leddy Deck and her husband Brad Deck, and Tom Leddy and his wife Scottie Cooper, and her 3 grandchildren Alex Leddy, Jennifer Leddy Barnes and her husband Andrew Barnes, and Tyler Deck with his fiancé Allison Simeone. The family would like to particularly thank the great staff at Heritage Park for their wonderful care during the last 6 years of Jane’s life.