Jane Isabel Horning, 87, of Wilsonville, Oregon, died in the early morning hours of August 5, 2026, after a brief illness with metastatic cancer.

Jane was born December 27, 1938, in Portland, Oregon, the youngest child of Walter Harold Horning and Ruth Croft Horning. Her brother John was 20 and her sister Carol nearly 16 when Jane arrived, which led to occasional family speculation about just how extensively her arrival had been planned.

Whatever the circumstances, Jane had arrived, and she had no intention of going through life quietly.

She grew up in Portland until her father’s work with the Department of the Interior took the family to the Washington, D.C., area. Jane remembered her childhood home as the place neighborhood children gathered, where her mother fed everyone and made them feel welcome.

Jane graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1956 and attended the University of Maryland before returning west. She applied to both the University of Oregon and Oregon State University and reportedly decided she would attend whichever accepted her first.

Ducks won.

The family remains grateful that the mail arrived in the proper order.

Jane graduated from the University of Oregon in 1960 with a degree in General Social Sciences and began working at Tektronix in the Personnel Department.

Jane became a mother in 1964 when her daughter, Kimberly Jo, was born at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Fourteen years later, in 1978, she welcomed her son, John Matthew, in Portland.

Six weeks later, Jane was back at Tektronix.

That fact says quite a bit about the era in which she was building her career. Jane later acknowledged that returning so quickly broke her heart, but women in leadership were still fighting the assumption that they would have children and leave the workforce. She felt she could not give the men making that argument the satisfaction of being right.

Tektronix became the setting for a remarkable professional life. In 1972, Jane became one of the first two women promoted into management at the company, when women in corporate leadership were still unusual, particularly in technology and engineering. She rose through leadership positions in employee benefits and corporate safety and health before becoming Corporate Benefits Manager.

Her work took her internationally and to Washington, D.C., where she participated in national discussions about employee benefits and testified before Congress.

Jane understood very clearly what it meant to be a woman in management during that era. She once explained that part of the reason she learned to talk over people in meetings was simple: if she did not, the men would talk over her.

She also learned that knowing something was not enough. You had to be able to explain it so the person sitting across from you actually understood it.

That combination of intelligence, independence and practicality defined much of Jane’s life.

When repeated layoffs eventually made her work at Tektronix increasingly difficult, Jane chose to leave and built another chapter. She established a successful consulting business, where her daughter Kim later had the opportunity to work alongside her and see firsthand the professional side of the mother she had always known.

Jane was equally serious about raising capable children.

When John was eight, she showed him how to operate the washing machine and explained that, now that he possessed this information, if he wanted clean clothes he was perfectly capable of producing them.

She taught her children to cook, manage money and solve problems. When John was 17, she sat him down and explained how a 401(k) worked and what compound growth could accomplish over time. Years later, when an employer offered matching contributions, he remembered the lesson and contributed the maximum.

She did not merely tell her children to become independent adults.

She provided instructions.

Then she expected them to get on with it.

Jane applied the same philosophy to herself. She managed her own finances and investments, created her own business and twice purchased homes on her own.

Her final home in Villebois became perhaps the clearest expression of the life Jane built for herself. She first considered a home on Barber Street, leading to years of jokes about whether it had somehow been named for the family, but ultimately chose the lot with the better green space.

She designed the house to her own tastes, but one feature proved especially important: the front patio.

It gave Jane a place to sit outside while neighbors walked past and, naturally, talk to them.

For Jane, this was less a patio than a piece of social infrastructure.

Villebois became much more than the place she lived. Jane joined book clubs, played bridge, sang in a choir, participated in exercise programs and accumulated enough activities that her family joked that if they wanted to see her, they needed an appointment.

She was a social butterfly in the fullest sense, making friends throughout every stage of her life and somehow continuing to add more.

Jane’s love of people was matched by her love of the outdoors. Her father spent his career in forestry and public-land management, and Jane developed a lifelong connection to Oregon’s landscapes.

She loved Mount Hood, the McKenzie River, the Oregon Coast and, perhaps above all, skiing.

Jane skied well into her early eighties, at an age when many people might reasonably have concluded that sitting in the lodge with a warm drink represented the superior winter sport.

Jane was not especially interested in what people her age were supposed to be doing.

Seaside and the northern Oregon Coast held a special place in her life. Fourth of July gatherings with the Horning family became a tradition of good food, long conversations, children running around and fireworks, the kind of days that become family history almost without anyone noticing.

She traveled widely, read constantly and remained intensely curious about the world. When visiting somewhere new, Jane preferred to stop and read the historical marker herself, even when the person explaining the history was her son, who actually had a degree in history.

Family remained central throughout Jane’s life. She was an enthusiastic grandmother and great-grandmother who showed up for birthdays, games, concerts, recitals, school programs and countless other events.

Geography was generally treated as an inconvenience rather than a reason not to participate.

She was also devoted to her small dogs. Tucker and Tavo, who preceded her in death, were longtime companions familiar to many friends and neighbors. Molly was with her during the final years of her life.

Jane had an infectious laugh, and the things capable of setting it off were not always particularly intellectual.

A well-timed scene in Shrek 2 could do it.

She loved music, conversation, gin and tonics, Bud Light, bread with room-temperature butter and dessert.

Especially dessert.

When her children were young, there were occasional evenings when Jane announced that dessert would be served before dinner.

Sometimes you just need dessert first.

Jane was preceded in death by her parents, Walter Harold and Ruth Croft Horning; her brother, John Horning; her sister, Carol Anne Horning; and her beloved dogs Tucker and Tavo.

She is survived by her daughter, Kim Edmonds, and Kim’s husband, Dan; her son, John Barber, and his wife, Audra Giese; her grandchildren Kyle Edmonds and his wife, Melissa, Chris Edmonds, Samantha Bourque, Erik Edmonds and his fiancée, Maddy Strout, and Vesper Barber; her great-grandchildren Cora, Ruth Ann and Ollie; her dog Molly; and a large extended family and community of friends accumulated over 87 very full years.

Jane once described retirement as enjoying “family and good friends and the beauty of nature.”

It was a remarkably accurate summary of what mattered to her.

She built a career when women were still being told that certain rooms were not meant for them. She built a business and financial independence. She raised two capable children. She traveled. She read. She hiked. She skied into her eighties. She found communities and became part of their fabric. She collected friends, kept learning, laughed loudly and, every so often, ate dessert first.

Jane did not want her death marked only by mourning. She wanted a celebration of life.

Her family and friends will gather to celebrate Jane on Sunday, September 27, 2026, from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. at the Villebois Community Center in Wilsonville.

Those wishing to honor Jane may consider supporting the North Coast Land Conservancy and the Oregon landscapes she cared so deeply about.

Most of all, remember her by being curious, learning something for yourself, spending time outdoors, talking to somebody interesting, laughing loudly and, when circumstances warrant it, having dessert first.