The Worthington Times

Jane Love, formerly of Worthington, Indiana, passed away Friday evening, June 8, 2007 at Washington Adventist Hospital in Maryland.

Jane was born Juanita Hemphill in 1915 in Marion, Illinois. According to her life story posted online, she would tell her friends that she lived with her grandparents, as she was ashamed of her parents’ dirt floor shack.

She left home at 17 to join the marathon dances and after working with Red Skelton and Red Buttons developing comedy acts, she married her dancing partner Frankie Wegner on stage in Santa Barbara. They settled in Chicago, where Frankie became a truck driver, and Jane became a manicurist. But when Frankie sold the furniture to pay gambling debts, she left him.

She soon met Earl Love, a returned WW II veteran and artist who worked at the opulent Gunn’s Beauty Salon in Hyde Park. Their marriage lasted nearly 50 years.

In the 1970s they moved to Brown County and joined the art colony there while their son Douglas was attending Indiana University nearby. Jane became proficient in Tole Painting, and supported herself by teaching from her studio in Worthington. After Earl died, Jane moved to Greenbelt, Maryland with her son, Doug.

A memorial service was being planned at the Atholton Seventh Day Adventist Church in Columbia, Maryland, with readings from her memoirs. An art sale is also planned, to share her collection with her friends. She has donated her body to the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore.

Stories about her life in and near Worthington are included in a memoir on a Greenbelt, Maryland website - Click here to go there.