Jane Trigere: A Force for Good is Gone

I first met Jane Trigere about 30 years ago, after she and her husband Ken Schoen moved to town from Easthampton in 1994. They bought the old firehouse, and quickly turned it into Ken’s bookstore, filled with tomes relating to Judaica, his specialty.  Jane was very vocal about her opinions on various topics around town, I remember her coming to a planning board hearing about the Crestview development that Steve Upton built in the early 1990s.

“What I want to know,” Jane declared at the assembled town audience., “Why this name?  It’s not a ridge, and it’s not a crest!”  Today those houses have been occupied for twenty plus years and the memory of any pushback to that development faded away. Sort of like what happened with Sugarloaf Estates, in 2018.   Jane was at all of those hearings too.

Jane was an energetic force for good in our village.  She opened her Arts Bank in 2014 just to bring art and culture here.  It is a bit like what I did, when I wanted the town to have its own hip little cafe, I opened one.   Jane wanted to show art and bring in artists.  For a short but spectacular brief blur of time, she did just that.

She headed up the cemetary repairs, keeping it all going and got the town to create a permanent board to care for these important places.

I remember so many fun events at the Arts Bank…just as I remember the bank tellers from Bank of America who worked there for so many years before Ken and Jane bought the building.  Jane had imagination, she had real verve, and she shared it all with all of us.

Jane and Ken wrote a wonderfully complete and heartfelt obit here.

Jane every time I saw you we laughed a bit, and enjoyed our conversation. I will miss you.