Jeanne M. Conley, of Bremen, passed away due to complications of kidney cancer on April 30.
Jeanne was born on June 9, 1922, daughter of Marion (Davis) and Walter Pierrepoint Ifill. She attended the Muscongus School, was active in the 4-H Club, and then became a 1939 graduate from Waldoboro High School.
In 1942 she went to work in Massachusetts and later that year, married Bernard F. Riley of Cambridge. Riley was killed in France in August 1944. She worked for two summers at Kindercamp in Bremen. She married G. Earle Camber of Cambridge; they lived in Revere, Woburn and settled in Wilmington, Mass. for 21 years.
She was a Den mother in Cub Scouts and for 15 years a Girl Scout leader and summer camp director who taught nature for all the troops in town. She belonged to the Baldwin Civic Association, the Wilmington Skating Club, and Wilmington Methodist Church.
For 12 years Jeanne served as a special officer in the Wilmington Police Department. She also decorated mints at a home workshop of the head decorator of a confectionary company. She made hundreds of wedding and birthday cakes, many for friends and relatives (including Christmas gingerbread houses for 58 years).
In 1968 she matriculated at Tewksbury Hospital’s School of Practical Nursing and graduated in 1969 as an LPN, and began working at that hospital, then the Medical Personnel pool, and the Bayview Nursing Home of Winthrop, Mass. Jeanne divorced in 1974. She married Clyde D. Conley and moved to Bremen in 1977.
She worked at Fieldcrest Manor Nursing Home in Waldoboro and also did private duty nursing care. She belonged to the Muscongus Community Club, Bremen Union Church (where her grandparents had a pew), the Patriotic Club, Coastal Clippers Square Dance Club, the Muscongus Pond Association, and the Audubon Society. The Maine Audubon awarded her with special recognition “…for 20 years of surveying and protecting Maine’s Common Loons…” that is, she was a certified loon counter.
Jeanne was a great friend of the Miles Memorial Hospital League in Damariscotta. She worked at their rummage sale for 20 years and fed volunteers for 17 of them. She always had a garden and froze and canned most every year throughout her life. She and Clyde traveled extensively throughout the USA, visiting every state except Kansas. Jeanne was known for her picnics and for mowing her three acres on her John Deere with her Bichon Frise, Frosty, in her lap.
Jeanne made many life-long friends; Kathy Burgess came up from South Carolina, a classmate from nursing school, to tend to Jeanne in her final days. She introduced herself to Jeanne’s children as “…your sister from a different mother.” Linda Kane of Georgia did as well. Marge Jicha of Bremen was one of Jeanne’s dear friends and they would do anything for each other.
Jeanne hosted three Davis family reunion picnics at her home where, in August 1991, they unraveled a 20-foot chart put together by her cousins, Barbara Plummer Briggs and Mildred Plummer. Just eleven generations to the Mayflower, it documented the family’s lineage back to the families of Richard Warren, Samuel Baker, Henry Howland, and William White. All of them came over on the Mayflower.
She was predeceased by her husband and best friend, Clyde; brothers, Clinton and Edward Ifill; and stepdaughter, Kathleen Blair.
She is survived by her children and spouses, Robert Riley and wife Patricia of Winter Haven, Fla., Valerie Borgal and husband Thomas of Tewksbury, Mass., and Bruce Camber and wife Hattie of River Ridge, La.; stepchildren, Jon, Leland, and Peter Conley of Concord, Mass., Bedford, Mass., and Orlando, Fla., respectively, and Carol Baker of Mt. Dora, Fla.; and six grandchildren; eight great-grandchildren; one great-great-grandchild; nine step-grandchildren; nine step-great-grandchildren; brother, Robert Ifill of Damariscotta and Readfield; and sister, Lila San Angelo of Bremen.
A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m., Sun., June 15 at the Strong-Hancock Funeral Home, 612 Main St., (Bus. Route 1 – 1.6 miles north of downtown Damariscotta once you cross the little bridge into town). The service will be officiated by her dear friends and ministers, Doug Wood of Safe Harbor Community Church in Bremen and Tim Connelly of the Word of Life Church in Waldoboro.
In lieu of flowers, please donate to the best cancer research organization that you know.
Condolences, and messages for the family, may be expressed by visiting www.StrongHancock.com.
Arrangements are under the direction and care of the Strong-Hancock Funeral Home, 612 Main St., Damariscotta.
