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“Mrs. Jane” Honored with Popsicles, Parade on Her 90th Birthday

By Gerri Miller

Staff Writer

If I am blessed to turn 90 one day, I hope that I will have lived as fully and been loved as much as Prattville resident Jane Klinner.

Her friends and family showed their love to Mrs. Jane Sunday by having a birthday parade that included nearly a dozen cars, an ambulance and a fire truck complete with sirens wailing. Mrs. Jane smiled and waved back to the passengers of the decorated vehicles as they honked and waved at her. Not even rain and an occasional clap of thunder could stop the festivities.

“I was shocked,” she said. “It doesn’t do any good to tell Larry no because he’s going to do what he wants to do for you anyway. I really did love it and he’s been a good friend for many years.”

The Larry Mrs. Jane referenced is Larry Caver, who organized the parade and a small party in the front yard afterwards with popsicles and bottled water.  A well-known historical researcher with the Old Autauga Historical Society, he has known her since 1989.

“We had planned a luncheon before the pandemic, but of course all of that changed,” Mr. Caver said. He said he thought a parade was something her friends could do while still remaining at a proper social distance.

Mrs. Jane moved to Prattville with her husband Paul in 1951. For the first few years, she worked for lawyers George Taylor and Bill Mewby in an office above Moncrief’s Store downtown. She got a job in the Franchise Division of the Alabama Department of Revenue in 1955 where she worked for 32 years until she retired.

“Jane was the secretary to the division director,” said long-time friend and coworker Barbara Russell. “She had a spiral notebook for every person employed in the Franchise Division. She said it helped her remember things about employees,” she said.

Jane and Paul were married for 62 years before he died in 2012. They have a son named Johnny and two grandchildren. She is a member of First Baptist Church.

Jane lives the way I want to live when I am her age: independently. She loves digging in her flower beds and her hard work is evident in the tidy flower beds blooming with color.

I asked her what she thought about turning 90 and her answer is telling.

“To tell you the truth, I hadn’t even though about being that old,” she said.

For Mrs. Jane, age really is just a number.