Jane Blunt Clemmens, a former University of Maryland Medical Center pediatric nurse, marathon runner and family matriarch, died Feb. 9 at her Towson home. She was 95.

Born in Ruthsburg, Queen Anne’s County, she was the daughter of Wilmer Blunt, a farmer, and Edna Jewell Blunt, who also worked on the family farm. As a young woman, she milked the cows, collected eggs, picked tomatoes and helped with other chores on the farm. She filled lamps with kerosene because electricity did not reach the family farm until 1946. She also kept a pet goat.

As a 14-year-old, she heard of the news her older brother, Carey, was killed on D-Day, June 6, 1944, during the Allied Invasion at Normandy, France.

Her son Michael R. Clemmens, said, “His death caused her great sorrow.”

“There [on the farm], she learned to be content with the simple joys in life,” said her daughter, Jeanne Morris. “She was gentle and quiet and nonjudgmental. She took pleasure in tiny things. She never sought the spotlight. She was a great source of advice to her family.”

She attended a one-room school before graduating from Centreville High School. She dreamed of becoming a nurse and traveled to Baltimore aboard a ferry, the Love Point steamer.

She lived in a nurses’ dormitory and earned her nursing degree at the University of Maryland. There, she met her future husband, Dr. Raymond L. Clemmens, who was training in pediatrics while she was the head nurse of the pediatric unit.

They eloped to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on May 3, 1952. They settled in the Campus Hill section of Towson, where she lived until her death. They were early buyers in the area and recalled when Goucher Boulevard was a dirt road.

She became a runner and did laps around the Goucher College campus and completed two marathons. She also spent part of the winter in Sanibel, Florida, and assembled a large shell collection.

After raising her family — she gave up nursing after the birth of her first child — she assumed the role of the matriarch and doted on her expanding family which includes ten grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

Mrs. Clemmens was an accomplished cook and a healthy eater. She told her family she could exist on a daily diet of broiled chicken and coleslaw.

A life celebration will be held at 10 a.m. March 8 at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church, Church Lane in Cockeysville.

Survivors include her daughter, Jeanne Clemmens Morris, of Sherwood Forest; two sons, Michael R. Clemmens, of Sherwood Forest and James C. Clemmens, of Stoneleigh; 10 grandchildren; and 16 great-grandchildren. Her husband, Dr. Raymond L. Clemmens, professor of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, died in 1998.

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