A Little History Crush

While flipping through an old copy of the Pegasus, I couldn’t help but notice Jean Gill.

Pictured here in the 1946 yearbook as a Senior, Jean has dark, perfectly coiffed hair and a shy smile, and her kind eyes seem to stare through the camera directly at the viewer. Reading the accompanying blurb makes it clear that although she had many admirers during her time at Washington College, Jean herself only had eyes for one: Ed. The Pegasus writer claimed that they could hear wedding bells in Jean’s future, and I wanted to see if their prediction came true, so I did a little digging.

The prediction was spot-on. According to her obituary, Jean married Edward G. Smith in 1950, and they remained married until her death in 2012. During their 62 (sixty-two!) years of marriage, Jean and Ed were blessed with a son, a daughter, several grandchildren, and many friends. Jean’s obituary, which references her “mischievous sense of humor” and “capacity for love,” serves only to reinforce the lovely description of her in the Pegasus.