Jane Gurko

1941 - 2010

Jane Gurko
By Helen Falandes
From the time she was a small girl growing up in Manhattan, Jane Gurko dreamed of living in the country. On the evening of November 29, 2010, Jane died quite suddenly in her Willits woodland home, Terpsichore. She was sharing the company, the conversation, and the laughter of her closest friends right up to the last moments of her life.
Jane was born in 1941 to Miriam Gurko (d. 1988), an independent scholar, researcher and author, and Leo Gurko (d. 2008), educator, author and literary critic.
Along with her older brother Steve (now living in Frisco, Colorado), Jane attended the Bronx High School of Science, a specialized public high school in which admission is based on academic examination. She thrived in that highly competitive atmosphere, and toned down her style only in order to fit in when she went on to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Jane always spoke with great affection of her Smith years. She returned regularly for reunions and maintained close lifetime friendships with several of her Smith classmates. She graduated in 1961 with honors in English and with a biology major as well.
She chose U.C. Berkeley for graduate school, basing her decision on other Smith graduates' reports that Berkeley was the place to be. She selected English as her field of study, and completed her Ph.D. degree with a dissertation on D.H. Lawrence although by then, the politics of lesbian-feminism, animal rights, and anti-nuclear work had clearly eclipsed literature as her priority.
In 1967 San Francisco State University hired Jane and soon promoted her to a full professorship in the Department of English. In 1973 she joined three other faculty women to initiate a ground-breaking curriculum experiment that ultimately became SFSU's highly regarded Women Studies Department. Jane is still acknowledged to have been one of the primary architects of that department's creation and development. In 1980 she was chosen associate dean of the School of Humanities, and she fulfilled that administrative role for the rest of her academic career.
The first in a long series of health crises led Jane to take early retirement in 1997. By that time, she and a few close women friends had purchased land in Willits where they formed a women's cooperative landholding group. Jane finally had her home in the country.
Jane Gurko was known for her commitment to helping women achieve their dreams, both with her financial support and with her pure generosity of spirit. She not only volunteered her services to her community, as with her work at the Willits library, but offered to Willits her musical skills as well.
She was a wonderful musician, one who had sung and played musical instruments throughout her life. After retirement and settling down in Willits she sang and coached singers in many settings, including the original Emandal Chorale, the Eel River Singers, numerous Ann McDonald/Post choral groups, the Bach Choir at Sonoma State University, and the last of her several women's barbershop quartets, "Works In Progress."
After music, Jane's other passions were for her garden and for her work in the ceramics lab at Mendocino College. For decades, she made her annual trip to Ashland, Oregon, for the Shakespeare festival, enjoying the after-performance analysis and discussion as much as the play itself.
Jane is deeply missed by Sally Miller Gearhart, with whom she shared the relationship of a lifetime. She leaves her godsons, Daniel and Sam Sapoznick, the rest of her family-of-choice, her beloved aging black cat Oliver, as well as a wildly diverse and entertaining community of friends.
Jane had a talent for staying in touch; she thrived on good conversation; and she was genuinely interested in the thoughts and viewpoints of her friends.
Jane Gurko's friends are invited to a community gathering to celebrate her life at the United Methodist Church in Willits from 1 to 4 p.m. on January 8, 2011.
Remembrances of Jane can be sent to PO Box 1511, Willits 95490, to be included in the celebration of her life.
People may, of course, make contributions to a charity of their choice in Jane's honor.