Jane Scheerer Pilcher ’44 sold her family home and moved to a retirement community across the river from her old home. “I love it here and go to all DG alumnae meetings in Ann Arbor, Mich. My five children, 17 grandchildren, and 11 great‑grandchildren live all over the U.S., and we get together once a year, usually in Hawaii where one of my sons lives.”

A little stretch of the truth we did get together in 2006 in Kawui for a family reunion.Joel

From the book “Pieces of Eight: Still best friends After all these years by Rosale Maggio

The Value of a Dollar Frank page 184

Most of my memories center on either jobs I have done or hell that I have raised.

During the summer between seventh and eighth grades, I worked on a farm owned by Harvey Scheerer. Harvey and Eva were wonderful people and good friends of my parents. I’m sure I got the job due to that relationship.

For the first day, Harvey had said he’d pick me up at 6:00 am sharp and that I should bring a flask of water. He drove me in his pink Cadillac, to a cheerless field in the middle of nowhere. Harvey bought a new Cadillac every year and drove it around the farm as it were a four-wheel-drive truck.

When we reached the end of a narrow path between two cornfields, he gave me my instructions for the day. Lining this path on both sides was an electric fence. The Stakes were of many different shapes and sizes. The wire was attached to a porcelain know, which had been nailed into the stake. My charge was to unhook the wire from each know and pull the stake from the ground. I was to leave each stake at the place of removal.

Well I thought I’d be an old man by the time I finished this job although Harvey acted as if it was only a morning’s work.

Time crawled. By 8:00 am, I had finished my water ration. Close to noon, when I thought I was about to expire, I saw a pink Cadillac flying across a plowed field toward me. I hoped he would stop and at least talk to me.

He and his hired man got out and teased me about how little I had done. Later, they told me they were impressed with me. Why do people do that to kids?

When Harvey asked if I had ever drive a tractor, my immediate reply was yes-not the first fib that had passed my lips. So he told me to go up to the farmyard and drive the Ford out to him.

As I hustled across that field, I hoped beyond hope that at least one of the two tractors had the word “Ford” printed on it-and that I could locate

Mom had this photo taken of her and Tom Selleck when mom and dad lived in Hawaii and Magnium PI was the big TV hit. She had the photo mounted in a 8x10 black frame and placed with all our family photos in the hall going up to the second story of our house. I don't know if anyone tripped on the stairs because of that, I'll bet there was a few second glances. She liked getting her picture taken with celebrities she had a great one taken with Arnold Palmer in matching outfits. It has become a family tradition now.

He wasn't the President of the United States of America, yet. He was a radio broadcaster mom called him "Dutch" which was his nickname. Why did he come to the farm where my mom lived in Fort Dodge Iowa? It was the first farm to get electricity. Back then that was a big story. Mom and Aunt Helen said he was very handsome. This was before he became a movie star too. Mr. Reagan interviewed my grandparents Harvey and Eva. Unfortunately they didn't get a photo of him visiting. I don't know if Harvey had his Poloraid camera then.

From the Article: Ronald Reagan From Broadcaster to President

After Reagan graduated from college in 1932, he moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where he became a radio announcer and sports broadcaster at Station WHO.

Jane Fonda Blog copy (see the photo marked JaneFonds.com)

Photo Caption

87 year old Mrs Pilcher's husband was a Prof of Finance at U of M. She's been coming to games for 65 years. Now she comes alone but still comes. Has 17 grandchildren all involved in sports.  October 2011

JERRY B PILCHER

11.01.2011 · Log in to Reply

Jane, “BOTH” Janes in fact. (My mom, Jane Pilcher, and of course, the Acadamy Award winning actress, Ms. Fonda) I’m so glad you two somehow met.

My mother was such a huge fan of your father’s work, (who wasn’t?) and my mother took me to many of your films first-run showings in the “little college town” of Ann Arbor.

Jane Pilcher has indeed “lived well”, and certainly “aged well”.

Your courtesy and graciousness in dealing with my mother this past weekend is most appreciated by me, her son, my brothers, and my sister, who still lives in A2.

“Jane P.” is a great woman, and is a “Mom” to an awful lot of former students at U of M and kids in Ann Arbor in general. By her very nature, she has been a surrogate mom for friends and students who have 1)Lost their birth mom. 2)Are away from home. 3)Need a motherly figure. 4)Just need a friend.

It just comes naturally for her, perhaps a product of her Iowa farm-girl upbringing.

Perhaps the best example I can give of how much she has impacted others, in her own way, is during my junior high years, when my best friend, and family friend, Matt Schembechler, called the local radio station, and encouraged listeners to vote for Mrs. P. as “Mother Of The Year”.

She won. But of course anyone who knew her knew that, us kids, well, we knew it, we just didn’t tell her that at the time.

To me, she’s still the “Mother Of The Year.”

Thanks for making her weekend just a little bit more special.