Snohomish teacher remembered for her positive outlook

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, November 4, 2006

Jane McGee went from a childhood in rural Eastern Washington to a prestigious university in Chicago before finding her true home in Snohomish.

There, she spent much of her life as a mother and a teacher. She is remembered as a positive force by those who knew her best.

“She always put a positive spin on everything,” said her son, Barrett “Barry” McGee. Her older son, Neil McGee, said “there was always unconditional love.”

Jane Elizabeth Agor McGee died Oct. 25 in Snohomish. She was 84. Her husband, Horace J. “Mac” McGee, died in 1998.

She is survived by her sons and daughters-in-law, Neil and Nancy McGee of Bothell and Barry and Diane McGee of Snohomish; her sister, Dorothy Matuschak; and six grandchildren, Megan McGee-Lysaght, Kyle McGee, Janessa McGee, Chelsey McGee, Bryson McGee and Chad McGee. She was also preceded in death by her brother, Benn Agor.

Jane Agor was born in Yakima on June 24, 1922, into a family with deep roots east of the Cascades. Her paternal grandfather was a shepherd from a Basque clan that settled in the Ellensburg area in the 1870s.

Her maternal grandparents lived on Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill, and she came to Seattle for high school. She graduated from Queen Anne High School and attended the University of Washington, where she made lifelong friends in the Sigma Kappa sorority.

She later earned her teaching degree from Northwestern University in Chicago and attended a fifth year in teaching at Seattle Pacific University.

In 1950, she married Mac McGee. They bought a real estate and insurance business in Snohomish and settled there to raise their family.

Jane McGee came of age in a time when many women stayed home to raise children, and that was her choice. Growing up, Neil McGee said, “it was almost like ‘The Leave It to Beaver’ show.”

In the 1960s and ’70s, when her sons were older, she taught humanities and English at Snohomish High School.

Lynn Schilaty lived next door to the McGees for 43 years, as a girl and later after she purchased her parents’ Snohomish home.

“When I think about Jane, she was the personification of elegance and sophistication. She was educated, and she represented all that to me, how important education was for a woman,” said Schilaty, who also went to UW.

Schilaty said she’d come home from college on weekends and McGee would help her with her papers. “I’d really get a better grade. I remember she was just appalled I hadn’t learned how footnotes were properly done. She inspired you to do better,” Schilaty said.

While she never had Jane McGee as a teacher, Schilaty’s brother did. Once, when her brother skipped her class, Schilaty said McGee drove into her driveway after school and coolly said “Hi John” to the errant pupil. “She was always so funny.”

Barry McGee said his mother loved running into former students and catching up on their lives.

Dorothy “Dode” Matuschak and her younger sister joined the Sigma Kappa house together at UW.

In later life, the two shared an interest in genealogy. Jane McGee was a member of the Everett-based Marcus Whitman Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. “You have to descend from someone involved in the Revolution. The fun part is to find out if you do,” said Matuschak. The sisters traced relatives back to the early days of American history.

An avid reader, McGee was active in a book club and in a Bible study group at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Snohomish.

While a teacher at Snohomish High, she co-authored “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” by Bonnie L. Heintz, Frank Herbert, Donald A. Joos and Jane Agor McGee. With a science fiction focus, “it was intended as a classroom instructional book,” Barry McGee said.

Barry McGee said the family has good memories of an Alaska cruise his mother took in June with her children and grandchildren.

“I’m sure she was a bit uncomfortable, she was on oxygen and in a wheelchair part of the time,” he said. “But she was really open to any little adventure. She loved it.”

Some of Schilaty’s best memories are of backyard barbecues with her neighbors. “Every time we gathered with her, it was a great conversation. She might even dominate it a little. Without me even knowing it, she influenced me so much,” she said.

“You don’t get to choose your family, and often don’t get to choose your neighbors,” Schilaty said. “Sometimes, you’re lucky enough to have neighbors as precious as family.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.