Local woman learned work ethic early on Vermont family farm
Published in the December 23, 2015 – January 5, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Robert Airoldi
Photo by Robert Airoldi
Jan Dean relaxes in her southwest Morgan Hill home.
Jan Dean learned early the value of hard work. She was born on a Vermont dairy farm, the seventh of eight children, and remembers spending many childhood hours working on the family business. When her older brothers left to join the Armed Forces, she had to “volunteer” to help milk the cows. The farm also grew corn, yellow beans and hay, and they had two horses.
“Everybody played a part,” she said of the family sharing the workload. “Even if it just meant bringing water to those working in the field.”
Years later, raising two children as a single mother reinforced her work ethic values. Today, Dean continues that mindset in her job, with her volunteer work and tending to her property in southwest Morgan Hill. Just last year she bought a lawn mower she can sit on instead of the old-fashioned one she pushed. With a smile, she confesses to miss her walking mower.
“I have a guy who comes for some of the heavy stuff, but I still do a lot of the work myself,” she said. “I like it. I think it’s the farmer in me.”
Dean found herself making her home in Morgan Hill much like many people who come to visit California for the first time. While enrolled in nursing school in Boston, some friends invited her to visit the Golden State. She landed in Saratoga in the late ‘50s and enjoyed the Bay Area so much she decided to stay. She found a job at a title insurance company in Palo Alto where she did the bookkeeping, court research and tax records. She never returned to nursing school. “I got too busy making money and having fun,” she said of those early days in California.
Soon after she married and she and her husband opened an office supply and furniture store in Palo Alto. About that time, they bought the house in southwest Morgan Hill. After divorcing, she raised her two children in the home and continues to live there.
While raising her children, Dean got a job at a wholesale distributing company where she worked for 30 year before retiring.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I just knew that I didn’t want to work for anyone,” she said.
So about 12 years ago, she joined Legal Shield, a legal services and identity theft firm that provides affordable legal access, and employee benefits and ID theft protection. She worked diligently for about five or six years, creating residual income. Then she got more involved volunteering. But when Legal Shield was bought by a new company, she decided to get back into the game more. “I just love it,” she said of working. “I want to be doing it.”
She is also an arbitrator for the Better Business Bureau Auto Line program that contracts with manufacturers dealing with the California Lemon Law. When there is any malfunction of the automobile that has not been repaired to meet legal requirements she steps in. What began as a volunteer position in 1988, has turned into a small side business.
Dean has lived in Morgan Hill for nearly 50 years. When she moved here there was one grocery store and one large housing development. Despite all the changes, or perhaps because of them, Dean said she loves what’s happening here.
“I like what this community is doing,” she said. “This community offers a lot. I just never want to leave.”
Her volunteer work included a stint as a member of the Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. She’s been a Rotary Club member for the past seven years and continues to help out during Air for Paws fundraisers and Community Solution’s Helping Hands, Healing Hearts event. She’s also a 2008 graduate of Leadership Morgan Hill.
“Volunteering just came naturally,” she said. “I come from a small town where everyone helped each other. It’s just what people do.”
