Jane Elizabeth (Dalton) Lundergan

SALEM – Mrs. Jane E. (Dalton) Lundergan, a longtime Salem music teacher and church organist, died Tuesday, July 27, after a long illness. She was 93.

She was truly a lifelong Salem resident. Aside from time spent in college and nursing home rehabilitation visits, she lived her entire life in the house that her grandfather built.

She taught music at the Phillips School and for many years at the old Bowditch School on Flint Street before relocating to the Collins Middle School. There, as she used to say accurately, she “taught half the kids in Salem.” 

In her younger years, she enjoyed folk dancing, and long before schools emphasized multiculturalism, she liked exposing her students to music from around the world. She greatly enjoyed being the rehearsal pianist for the annual Carlton School show for about eight years. For many more years, she was a fan and supporter of Salem school music and drama productions.

She was the Salutatorian of the Salem High School, class of 1944. For a class exercise, she wrote what became the official school song, “To Salem High,” also known as the Salem High Alma Mater. She also played piano for orchestra and a jazz combo and edited a school publication called The Advance. During blackouts along the coast during World War II, she learned to play piano in the dark. As a teenager, she also volunteered as a guide demonstrating various colonial crafts at Pioneer Village.

After graduating from the College of St. Elizabeth in New Jersey in 1948, she completed some graduate education courses at Boston University before being hired as a teacher in Salem. When she married, the School Committee refused to re-hire her, because its policy at the time was that married women should not take jobs away from men. She managed to return to teaching as a “permanent substitute” for a while, then paused to have four children. As attitudes changed in the 1960s, she resumed teaching in a permanent role and continued until she retired in 1988.

For almost 25 years after “retiring,” she was an organist and pianist for the Ste. Anne’s choir and for what was then the Immaculate Conception Parish, playing at Masses, funerals and occasional weddings well into her 80s, when she could no longer climb the stairs to the choir loft. For many years before that, she volunteered to play piano at numerous parish and community events.

During the summer of 1971, she was the rehearsal pianist for the North Shore Music Theater, enabling her excited children to meet Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy, who was playing the lead in “Fiddler on the Roof.”

She displayed determination when helping her family. One of her sisters-in-law feared living alone when the Boston Strangler was on the loose, after a contractor told Jane he wouldn’t be able to convert her attic into an apartment, she came up with her own plan and persuaded the Zoning Board to approve it. 

A great believer in education, she devoted much of her earnings to her children’s tuition and school expenses.

In 2011, the Tri-M Music Honor Society of the National Association for Music Education awarded her an honorary life membership “for inspiring young musicians to achieve and for serving music education.”

The daughter of the late Patrick and Elizabeth (Roche) Dalton, she was the wife of the late Joseph E. Lundergan, a Salem firefighter. 

Jane is survived by her son, Edward Lundergan, his wife, Carol, her step-grandchildren, Brendan Kelly, Caitlin (Kelly), her husband, James Thomson and her step-great-grandchild, Levi, and her step-daughter, Amanda Kelly; her son, Timothy Lundergan; her son, David Lundergan and his wife, Beth, and her granddaughter, Bridget and her husband, Andrew Velarde; and her son, Daniel Lundergan, his wife, Laurie, and her grandson, Sean.

Her relatives wish to express their deepest thanks to all those who helped treat her various illnesses in the last years of her life, particularly Rosalind Edosomwan, her home health aide for the last four years.

ARRANGEMENTS: Her funeral Mass will be held at Ste. Anne’s Church, Jefferson Ave., Salem, Monday, Aug. 2^nd at 11:30 A.M. Relatives and friends invited. Please meet directly at church. Burial in St. Mary’s Cemetery, Salem. Visiting hours at O’Donnell Cremations – Funerals – Celebrations, 84 Washington Sq., (at Salem Common) Salem, Sunday, Aug. 1^st from 2 to 4 P.M. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Society of St. James, 24 Clark St., Boston, MA, 02109; or the St. Labre Indian School, Ashland, MT, 59004. To share a memory or offer a condolence, please visit www.odonnellfuneralservice.com

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