Jane Addie (Hein) Feierabend

Hein, Jane Addie MADISON-Jane Addie Hein was born on Oct. 25, 1920, in Wauwatosa, to John A. Hein and Adela H. Gall, living at 49 Vine St., the address later being changed (citywide due to rezoning) to 7404 Blanchard St. She attended public schools in Wauwatosa. Jane's family developed a lifelong friendship with a nurse who was attending to her mother, and who then went out to India as a missionary. Since that time Jane wanted to be a missionary nurse in India. Jane was an active member of Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, taught Sunday school, and attended church camps at Green Lake that emphasized Leadership Training. She developed a keen sense of seeing potentials in others and becoming an encourager in their lives. After graduating from high school Jane entered nurse's training at the Evangelical Deaconess Hospital in Milwaukee where she earned an R.N. degree. In 1943, she attended Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Ill., where she also had the appointment as campus nurse. There she met her life companion and true love, Ted and they became engaged to be married on April 9, 1944. Their marriage was postponed because Ted was drafted into the U.S. Army, and he served as a typist at the GHQ AFPAC (Gen. Douglas MacArthur's headquarters) in Manila, Philippines as part of the U.S. Army occupation in Tokyo, Japan. Jane graduated from Elmhurst in 1943 with a B.S. degree in medical education. On his discharge from the Army, Ted was married to Jane on Oct. 4, 1946, by the Rev. Muehleisen at Zoar Evangelical and Reformed Church located in Rockfield, Wis. Their honeymoon consisted of Jane immediately starting as a nursing instructor at the Missouri Baptist Hospital, St. Louis, Mo., while Ted started classes at the undergraduate school of Washington University of St. Louis to complete his premedical requirements that led on to entering the Washington University School of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1951. During that time Jane became occupied in starting their family, and Lee was born in 1948, James in 1949, and Lois in 1950. She showed considerable ingenuity in managing a growing family on the living stipend from the GI Bill of Rights, which amounted to considerably less that $100 a month. This, she discovered later, proved invaluable in preparing her for life as a missionary wife and mother, which were added to the demands on her professional skills. Her family never was in want, and it taught them the joys of getting along on just enough. Ted did a year rotating internship at the Evangelical Deaconess Hospital, St. Louis, and then they were sent out as medical missionaries by the Board of International Missions of the Evangelical and Reformed Church headquartered in St. Louis. They departed by ship from New York in July 1952, at which time Jane was already expecting their fourth child. They arrived in Bombay on India's Independence Day, Aug. 15, 1952, celebrating five years of India's independence from the British Raj. They were assigned to the Evangelical Hospital in Tilda, M.P. where their third son Bruce was born on October 7, 1952. The first assignment was to complete the required two years of language study. For Ted, who knew the language since childhood, this was to get to know the rules of grammar, but his fluency in the language excused him from the second year, which proved to be a considerable disadvantage for Jane, who struggled with the language, particularly in conversational speech. She discovered that the children were becoming more fluent than she since they had to use the language in play with the local children. They were also learning the local dialect called Chhattisgarhi while she was struggling with the more formal forms of Hindi. Language study at first was conducted with a local teacher at Tilda while using the textbook used by the Landaur Language School, where they were to study in the following summer for six months in an intensive session of full day classes and sessions. While Ted was being the only doctor at the 100-bed hospital at Tilda for much of the time, during the two terms they were at Tilda, Jane served as social worker, acting Nursing Superintendent, and mother of four, whom she also started to home school. Their first furlough 1956-1959 was to provide Ted with a surgical residency, during which time Jane was active in three PTAs, keeping house and learning the strange custom of cooking food outside on a charcoal brazier (thinking she had left such primitive methods behind in India), and also giving birth to Mary Beth in 1958. After spending another term of service at Tilda Hospital, in 1963 Ted took another residency at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals in Madison, Wis., specializing on Reconstructive Surgery, and after completion stayed on as an Instructor in the Department of Plastic Surgery for a year in order to take his Board examinations with the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Jane juggled three PTAs while keeping house for an active family, but was also active on the Board of the YWCA and in church activities at the First Congregational Church. On their return to India in 1967, the family was assigned to the faculty of the Christian Medical College in Ludhiana, Punjab, where Ted started a Plastic Surgery Unit under the Department of Surgery, and began a Burns Unit. Jane ran an open home at which all strangers to the CMC facilities were welcome, she helped with the guest house, assisted in the Social Work department, and also in the Dietary department, and when the School of Nursing was upgrading to a degree level, was able to teach there until enough local staff became qualified to teach in the new College of Nursing. She found that the quality of nursing education in a relatively advanced state like Punjab was inferior to that which had been provided at the nursing school at Tilda Hospital, mainly because at Tilda (which was part of the Mid India Board of Nursing Examiners) teaching was done in the vernacular (Hindi language) which the students were more easily able to follow than those in Punjab, where teaching was done in English, a second or third language for their nursing students. Ludhiana was a city much closer to where the children were going to school, which was at Woodstock School in Landaur, Mussourie, U.P. located in the Himalaya foothills at about 6,000 feet elevation. As the children were growing into their teen years they needed more of her attention, and in many years she would spend several months of the summer in Landaur giving them the parental support they needed during these formative years. Their school would have the annual vacation break of three months during the winter when it was cold in the mountains and pleasant in the plain where Jane's family resided. Jane and Ted served in Ludhiana for nineteen years, and then it became clear that it was time to move on to other things. Having received a call to go to Afghanistan, arrangements that the Missions Board (now called the United Church Board for World Ministries) had to do to make that possible were carried out and in 1986; they transferred to work for the International Assistance Mission (IAM) in Kabul, Afghanistan, where they spent three and a half years before retirement. While Ted worked under the Ministry of Health in one of the government hospitals, Jane helped with the church community of the IAM and with the school for missionary children, acted as grandmother and elder stateswoman for the younger group of single and married missionaries, which totaled about 45 in Kabul. This was during the Russian occupation but was a quieter and safer period than after the Russians (and Feierabends) had left. On completion of their missionary service in 1989, they settled for retirement in Madison, where their children had been and were still attending the University after graduating from the high school level, at Woodstock school. They became active at Lake Edge United Church of Christ, and Jane helped start the Interfaith Hospitality Network by being the first Coordinator for the church as it received the homeless into the church's facilities for over-night shelter, and was concerned about this effort to address the problem of homelessness in the Madison area to the end. She was also concerned about the needs of those in CDA housing such as at the "Triange" and participated in visitations through the ministries of the Triangle Community Ministry, which was another faith-related outreach program so central to her life. A Memorial Service along with reception and reminiscences will be held on Saturday, October 3, 2015, at Memorial UCC church, 5705 Lacey Road, Fitchburg, Wi, at 12:00 - 3:00 pm. Jane's favorite Indian refreshments will be served. To contact the family and share memories tfeierabend1@gmail.com.  Please feel free to record your memories on this site for the family at www.gundersonfh.com. Gunderson Monona Funeral & Cremation Care 5203 Monona Drive (608)221-5420