Flora Jane Wilson

Flora Jane (Miles) Wilson, 95, of Aguascalientes, Mexico, passed away on August 22, 2022. She was born the eldest daughter to Eliza Jane (Ryan) and Floyd Cecil Miles on June 14,1927 in Winner, SD. At 3 years old, Tootie, as she was called then, and her family moved to White River, SD to manage a ranch during tough years of the Depression. Stories abound of her adventures of ranch life, most of which involved animals, which she had a love for all of her life. Riding horses with her big brother Bob to the one-room schoolhouse and sneaking onto the Rosebud Reservation land at night to watch the Lakota dancing by the campfire were cherished memories. Her parents left the land and ran an old hotel in White River before moving to Washington State when she was 14. At age 16 she began living with her Aunt Ada in Portland, OR, and then managed to join the Army at 17. Sent to San Francisco, she was a stenographer at Letterman Hospital until the war ended in 1945. After outgrowing her childhood names, she chose to go by Jane. Jane married and lived in Yakima, Seattle and Wenatchee, WA and then a few years in Gering, NE. Later after a move to the San Fernando Valley, CA she enjoyed working for several years as a professional dental assistant. She spent the majority of her life in Los Angeles where she was passionate about roses and she raised her children. She loved jazz music, filling the apartment with the sound of Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis in the 60s when her two oldest children were young. She became a skilled genealogist at a time when information was difficult to attain. An avid reader, she read thousands of books in her lifetime and loved learning. The last 20 years of her life she spent living in Mexico where she traveled, spent time with her children and grandchildren and enjoyed museums and classical music with her now deceased husband, Mel Wilson. The family will remember her for many things, including her dedication to learning, her love of animals, her incredible capacity to remember stories and her devotion to genealogy. The family has deep gratitude to Mary Garza for her friendship and care of Jane over the past 20 years, and especially for her compassion and care of Jane towards the end of her life. She leaves behind two sisters, Carol (Dick) Williams and Phyllis (Curt) Haugen her children, Barbra Fortier, Shannon (Randy) Furnier and Jonathan Wilson, her daughter-in-law Megan Wilson, as well as 4 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren.