“I like to keep busy,” Coffey said.
The retired Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake elementary school music teacher writes, solves word puzzles and plays piano on a daily basis from her room at Glendale Home. When The Gazette stopped by, the room was filled with cards from loved ones who recently visited to celebrate her birthday.
Coffey grew up in Northern Michigan, where her parents were Methodist preachers. She was drawn to music after taking a part-time filing job with her school’s music teacher, and in 1945, she graduated from Ohio’s College of Wooster with a master’s degree in music. That same year, she married Bill Coffey, who also attended the College of Wooster.
“Then he was sent overseas two weeks after we were married and was gone for 10 months,” Coffey remembers.
He went into the service with the Signal Corps and served in Bamberg, Germany, as a radio officer in the 97th Signal Battalion and she began her teaching career in Michigan. When he returned to the States, the couple moved to Boston so Bill could study electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Jane Coffey after recently turning 100 at the Glendale Home on Hatcheltown Road in Glenville Thursday, May 23, 2024.
After he graduated in 1948, he landed a job as an electrical engineer at General Electric’s Research and Development Center and the couple moved to Scotia and later to Charlton. Together, she and Bill, who died in 2016, had three children and several beloved pets.
Bill, who was an amateur radio enthusiast and longtime member of the Schenectady Amateur Radio Association, helped to found the classical music station WMHT, and Jane hosted a children’s music program for the station. Called Let’s Make Music, it was geared toward children in kindergarten through second grade. She has continued to financially support and listen to the station through the years and still tunes in regularly.
It was a WMHT program – AHA! A House for Arts – that partly inspired her to write “Everyone Needs a Pet.”
“I remember looking on AHA! one time and some man talked about writing and he said ‘Write what you know about,’” Coffey said.
PETER R. BARBER Jane Coffey with her first published book after recently turning 100 at the Glendale Home on Hatcheltown Road in Glenville Thursday, May 23, 2024.
She’s had pets just about all her life, mostly calico cats. Over the years, she’d write the story of each pet’s life when they died and not too long ago she decided to bring each of them together in “Everyone Needs a Pet.”
The stories are short but packed with zany tales of the cats’ – and one dog’s – adventures, each told from the animals’ perspective.
The first covers the family’s “college-educated” cat, Samantha. An adoptee from the Schenectady Animal Shelter (“I don’t know what we were being sheltered from – human beings or other animals perhaps?” writes Coffey), Samantha was taken to live at the University of Rochester by Coffey’s daughter Barb.
The cat stayed in the dormitory but was eventually expelled by Barb and her roommates for stealing their socks and dragging them around the suite. Samantha went on to camp with the family, taking an RV trip all the way up to Nova Scotia.
“Well, I got used to traveling in Arvie. We took trips every summer for six years,” Coffey writes. That includes journeys to Michigan, the World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee and New Orleans.
Coffey also writes about Pippin – the cat with middle-child syndrome who also goes camping with the family – and Cali, the cat who ruled the house. The book also includes a story about Max, a puppy who after being hit by a car in Charlton, became famous as “Mrs. Coffey’s three-legged dog.” Coffey would sometimes take the pup to school with her and had him attend music class.
“Everyone Needs a Pet” is available online but Janet Hutchison, owner of the Open Door Bookstore on Jay Street, also carries it.
“I had a delightful visit with Jane,” Hutchison said. “She and I share a love of classical music and for WMHT and we shared experiences with various musical groups in our area. It is wonderful that her many accomplishments now include publishing a book about family pets and we are so happy to present her work to our customers.”
While the book, which is published by Palmetto Publishing, has only been out since April, Coffey is already working on her next book, called “Mama was a Preacher.” It’s informed by her mother’s personal letters which date back to 1925.
“My father was a preacher first and he got sick. He had Parkinson’s disease but in those days, you didn’t know what it was,” Coffey said. “After he got so sick that he couldn’t do too much anymore, mama took over.”
Though her mother had studied bible at Syracuse University and received the proper credentials to preach, being a woman, she faced discrimination. Coffey added that the pastor at Burnt Hills United Methodist Church, where she’s long been a member, is a woman.
“It just shows that things have changed,” Coffey said.
The book is another project that will no doubt keep Coffey busy in the coming months and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
