Jane Dickson Lanier has died at age 99 at her home in LaGrange, Georgia, on Saturday, March 5, 2016, of complications of a stroke. She was born in Opelika, Alabama, on May 10, 1916, daughter of Thomas Louis Dickson and Mittie Laney Dickson, and attended Opelika public schools. A fast learner all her life, she was able to skip two grades and graduate high school at age sixteen. She first attended Judson College in Marion, Alabama, until her parents considered her to be old enough for a coeducational institution, and then transferred to Auburn University. At Auburn she is remembered as having been notably popular and as having excelled also in academic life. She majored in science and literature and joined the Kappa Delta sorority. After her graduation in 1936, she taught French in Alabama public schools in Opelika and Phenix City until 1940, when she married Bruce Nichols Lanier and settled in West Point, Georgia, his hometown. She lived in West Point until 2007, when she moved to Vernon Woods Retirement Community in LaGrange.

Mrs. Lanier reared four boys and was active in civic and church affairs. She was a volunteer with her church, Spring Road Christian Church, the Boy Scouts, the PTA, the Alabama -Georgia Hospital Auxiliary and Callaway Gardens, among others. She was lifelong and enthusiastic supporter of Auburn, which named an academic chair in her honor. In her youth she had loved riding horses and taught horseback riding. In later years she became an accomplished gardener who bred day lilies and gardened around her church as well her own home. She loved giving and going to parties all her life.

Her husband, Bruce, died in 2002 after 62 years of marriage, and Bruce N. Lanier, Jr., her oldest son, also predeceased her. Surviving family members include her oldest son’s widow, Susie Lanier Maxwell, and three younger sons, George H. Lanier II, of Atlanta, Louis D. Lanier, of Gainesville, Georgia, and John L. Lanier, of Lexington, Virginia. She has two grandchildren, Bruce N. Lanier III, of Birmingham, Alabama, who is married to Leeward Avary Lanier, and Shannon Lanier, who with her husband, David Steele, is in process of moving from Lakeland, Florida, to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Mrs. Lanier leaves five great-grandchildren, Avary, Bruce IV and James Lanier, and Savannah Grace and Freddie Steele. Also surviving is her sister Martha Stephenson, of Greenville, South Carolina, and her husband William K. Stephenson, their four sons and daughters-in-law, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild, and Forrest Shivers, the widower of her deceased sister Nancy, and his and Nancy’s three children and three grandchildren. The devoted and beloved caregivers of Mrs. Lanier during the last decade of her life, particularly Linda Siersma and Mary Arnold, and especially Isabelle “Izzy” Stephens, all of LaGrange, had also become members of her family.

There will be a memorial service for Jane Dickson Lanier at Spring Road Christian Church, 1729 Spring Road, Lanett, Alabama, at 11:00 AM on Tuesday, March 8, 2016. The family suggests making a gift to Alabama-Georgia Hospital Auxiliary, P.O. Box 348, Valley, Alabama 36854 or another charity of the donor’s choice instead of flowers. Funeral arrangements will be made by Johnson Brown Service Funeral Home in Valley, Alabama.

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