Jane Segraves, 97, teacher, traveler

Jane Segraves always seemed eager to take a trip, whether it was a bus ride with her church group or a plane trip to her favorite place, a son’s summer house in Maine.

In her 97 years, she visited every state in the United States except one.

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Family photo

Jane Segraves at age 90 on a motorcycle with her son Ed Segraves. She had visited every state but North Dakota.

“A few years ago, one of my daughters said, ‘We ought to just put her on a plane and get her up there,’ but she didn’t make it to North Dakota. I guess she didn’t have a reason to go there,” said her son, Ed Segraves of Atlanta.

Mrs. Segraves died of heart failure Sunday at Atria retirement home in Atlanta. The funeral is 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at A.S. Turner & Sons Funeral Home in Decatur.

Mrs. Segraves was born in what is now the East Atlanta neighborhood of Kirkwood, and raised in LaGrange. Her father was an advertising salesman until he lost his job in the Great Depression, said another son, Joe Segraves of Woodstock.

“Granddaddy painted store signs and was paid in food during the Depression. He also would buy women’s makeup and put it in small compacts and sell them door to door,” he said. “Grandma worked in a clothing store.”

Because of the Depression Mrs. Segraves was forced to quit teacher’s college in Athens and come home, but a local women’s group gave her a scholarship to attend LaGrange College, her sons said.

Mrs. Segraves taught at a small rural Georgia school for a few years and later worked for 23 years as a teacher at W.D. Thompson Elementary School, a now-closed school in DeKalb County.

She and her family lived a couple of blocks from the school. Although she retired in the mid-1970s, former students remembered her up until she entered the retirement home about two years ago, said Ed Segraves.

“Until the last couple of years, people would recognize her in the grocery store,” he said.

Mrs. Segraves drove her Oldsmobile until she was 95, often taking road trips with friends, he said.

Also, “every time that church bus left the parking lot, she was on it. She had her own seat,” he said. Her seniors group at Peachtree Baptist Church traveled to Nashville and the Ozarks, among other places.

Mrs. Segraves also was an avid bridge player and loved crossword puzzles and quilting and crocheting. She was known as a fount of answers for all kinds of practical questions, Ed Segraves said.

“I would call her about making jams and jellies and she would tell me, ‘You’re not going to put enough sugar in it. Put in more,’ ” he said.

Additional survivors include a third son, Jim Segraves of Dawsonville; seven grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.