Jane Slater Masciola

Jane Masciola, a dedicated nurse, mother, wife, choir enthusiast and Roman Catholic who lived for many years in Vermilion with her family of seven, died of old age on March 15 at Lowcountry Community Hospice House in Summerville, South Carolina. She was 89.

Jane Marie Slater was born in Charleston, West Virginia, on July 17, 1936, to Elizabeth Fisher Slater and George Harold Slater. She grew up in Dunbar, West Virginia, and graduated from Dunbar High School.

She remembered her childhood as a carefree time of playing with her younger sister Sara and their dog, Dandy, and going to concerts, picnics and church with her large extended family in the Charleston area. Jane also loved school. In the last days of her life, sipping a margarita in her hospice bed, she named her favorite elementary school teachers.

A constant in Jane’s life was singing, especially liturgical music, opera arias and folk songs, a pastime encouraged by her mother, a piano teacher and organist, and her father, who sang tenor and directed the church choir.

Jane’s participation in her father’s choir was the start of a lifetime of singing that included the St. Mary’s Catholic Church choir in Vermilion, where she also served as organist, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish choir in Lorain, and the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church choir in La Quinta, California, which she joined after retirement.

Jane graduated from West Virginia University (WVU) with a Bachelor of Science degree and in 1959 received her nursing diploma from the Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing in Baltimore, Maryland.

Jane married fellow WVU graduate Carmen J. Masciola, a music education major, in 1958 and over the next ten years had five daughters. In the mid-1960s, the couple built a house on Sassafras Drive in Vermilion, where they lived for most of the next three decades.

Jane was a well-liked neighbor and community member. She hosted a rotating bunco game for Sassafras Drive women and their close friends that went on for forty years. Always a nurse, Jane used the occasion to take the players’ blood pressure and record the results in a notebook that she kept for decades. When a person’s blood pressure crept up, Jane informed them.

While raising her family, Jane worked as a nurse at a number of area hospitals. Her reassuring presence helped many people through times of crisis. For several years beginning in the late ’70s she served as a public health nurse for Erie County, driving the country roads in all weathers to care for homebound patients.

One summer, Jane worked as a nurse at Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky where she was challenged by heat-stroke cases, debilitating blisters on people who had not worn sensible shoes, and the zebra smell blowing at her from the now-defunct Jungle Larry’s African Safari attraction.

For a time, Jane was an instructor at the St. Joseph Hospital School of Nursing in Lorain. She enjoyed passing along her knowledge to aspiring nurses. Later in her career, she focused on mental health care. She worked in hospital psychiatric wards in the Cleveland area, often on the night shift, and at the Nord Center, a community mental health facility in Lorain.

In the late ’80s, Jane and Carmen remodeled a historic waterfront home on Cedar Point Road in Sandusky, which during Prohibition had been a clandestine drop-off point for bootleg whiskey coming across Lake Erie from Canada. Some who stayed in the house reported booming noises inside the walls and felt certain the place was haunted. After a few too-snowy winters, the Masciolas sold the house and from then on split their time between Southern California’s Coachella Valley and a new home they built in Lorain.

These were very happy years for the couple. In California, they marveled at the mountain-and-desert views, the roadrunners, the bright bougainvilleas, and the hummingbirds. They were enthusiastic concertgoers, went on adventures in their RV, sang in the Indio Date Festival chorus, and made lots of new friends. Jane joined the Red Hats social club and a needlework group, got involved in church activities, and continued her lifelong hobby of collecting Depression-era glassware.

Jane also participated in the first Nurses’ Health Study, which tracked more than 120,000 nurses starting in 1976 and yielded a substantial part of what we know today about women’s health and the prevention of chronic diseases.

In her last years, Jane moved to the Charleston, South Carolina, area to be near family.

She is survived by her daughters, Cynthia J. Masciola of Redondo Beach, California, Christina Riddle (John Riddle) of Johns Island, South Carolina, Catherine Masciola (Jeff Lantz) of Rancho Mirage, California, Carol Masciola (Ibon Villelabeitia) of Geneva, Switzerland, and AnnaMarie Masciola (Brian Smith) of Frisco, Texas.

Survivors also include grandsons, Aaron Matijasic, Endika Villelabeitia, and Leonardo Villelabeitia; and granddaughters Elizabeth Matijasic and Rebecca A. Braden.

Jane was preceded in death by her husband in 2014; her sister, Sara Slater Murray in 2022; her grandson, Andrew J. Braden in 2013; and her granddaughter, Sarah Matijasic in 2022.

A funeral mass will be held at Blessed Sacrament Church in Charleston, SC on April 27, 2026, at 10:30 am. Arrangements by J. Henry Stuhr, Inc. West Ashley Chapel.

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