Jane Lynch
Jane Lynch, 84, Cushing, passed away March 9, 2024, at the Long Prairie Hospital.
A service celebrating Jane’s life was held March 16 at the Staples Assembly of God Church.
Born Jane Felix in Jordan, she was the fourth of nine children in the Florence and Clement Felix family. She grew up immersed in country life on a small farm at Prior Lake. The Felixes didn’t have much but they worked the land and tended their animals and faced adversity together with the strength of a close-knit family. Jane took this lesson forward into her adult life, embracing all celebratory occasions and holidays, welcoming family, friends and neighbors always.
The great love of her childhood was helping train and ride the family’s horses, including one half-Arabian beauty named “Lady” who became the stuff of family legend. Jane loved animals and was energized by the natural world. She often walked with her sisters to the local schools, choir practices and was a flag swinger in high school, marching in all of the local parades. She graduated from Prior Lake High School in 1958. Ambitious and gregarious, Jane was hired as a teller at First National Bank in Minneapolis, where she worked for five years. She travelled to see the sights on both coasts but always came back to Minnesota.
She met Robert (Bob) Lynch, the man she would fall in love with, marry and remain devoted to for the next 60 years. They soon moved from Minneapolis to a home on Lake Sarah in Greenfield, where they raised their four children. During this time, Jane started her journey of faith, a deeply important shift that became the bedrock foundation of her life going forward. She identified first and foremost as an ambassador and heir to the kingdom of Heaven.
She blended her faith and love of family, nature, animals and human connection in all facets of her life, from camping and hiking all over the U.S. and Canada with her family, gardening and running an organic orchard, to support the causes that meant the most to her, such as her faith, community, schools educating Native American children in their traditional languages, health-centric nutrition, boreal forest preservation and building houses for bluebirds, to name just a few. She continued her education as a non-traditional student, receiving an AA degree at North Hennepin Community College in the late 1980s.
She and Bob lived on a farm in Maple Lake for several years. There she helped convert to organic production before settling in Cushing on Thunder Lake. She spent quality time with her husband, the grandchildren she adored and her Bible study group. She cared for Bob during a prolonged terminal illness and fought hard to keep him in the home he loved (miraculously, with a lot of prayer and help from local heroes, she often emphasized) until his passing in 2023.
Jane is survived by three sons, Robert, III (Kristine), Patrick (Wendy) and Daniel (Cory) Lynch; two granddaughters, Madeline Hodgkins and Lauren Lynch; one grandson, Grant Lynch and six siblings, Mary, Florence, Frances, Margaret (Paul), Dennis (Susan) and Michael.
She is preceded in death by her parents; husband, Robert; one sister, Anne; one brother, Clement and one daughter, Sheila.
Arrangements were with the Iten Funeral Home of Browerville.
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