Jane Anne Majeski was born in 1952 and so grew up as the U.S. space program was also growing. Her childhood was punctuated by the formation of NASA in 1958, the first Soviet manned space flight in 1961, and the U.S. Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs which culminated with the first moon landing in 1969, the summer before her last year of high school. These events captured her imagination and sparked her life-long enthusiasm for space and space flight. Her passionate interest brought her to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia many times. In 2005 she joined a National Geographic tour to NASA in Houston and to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan where she was thrilled to experience, through simulation, the sensation of being weightless in space.

Jane devoured books by and about those who pioneered space exploration and the development of space vehicles. An avid consumer of movies about space exploration in IMAX and commercial theatres, she marked the 50th anniversary of the moon landing by watching the 2019 documentary "Apollo 11." Her infectious enthusiasm and fascinating stories of her visits to NASA and Baikonur prompted friends to read the books and see the movies she recommended and to develop their own appreciation for the scientists, engineers, astronauts and visionaries who have made space exploration possible.

Jane was born and grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey, but was a New Yorker at heart. She moved to Manhattan in 1974 after graduating with honors from Smith College in Massachusetts as a history major. She lived on the West Side for the rest of her life, enjoying theater, music, and walks in Central Park and entertaining family and an ever-widening circle of friends. Initially Jane worked in publishing; after earning an MBA from Columbia University she worked in finance, concluding her career with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

An avid traveler, Jane visited almost every continent. Sophisticated and urbane, she loved cities and museums but was equally at home camping and kayaking the great rivers of the American West and Latin America. One winter she voyaged to Scandinavia to see the Northern Lights – an experience she relayed to her friends with her usual enthusiasm and a sense of awe. Though she died in 2020, in our minds’ eyes she still gazes up into the night sky, imagining what it would be like to travel to its far distant reaches.