About Janet

It all started when...

The fourth of Frank and Rosane Clendining's nine children,  Janet was born on February 8, 1957.  She was a funny kid, always singing and smiling with a "half -grin".  When Jan was six years old, she was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes.

Jan learned to manage the disease by testing her blood sugar every morning, and adjusting her levels by giving herself insulin, alternating the injections between her arms and her legs.  Other than starting each day in this manner, she lived a very normal, active life.  She attended St. Lawrence Elementary School In Lindenwold, NJ where she had many friends, and Overbrook Regional High School in Pine Hill, where she made even more friends, and played field hockey, basketball, tennis, and softball. 

Jan went on to marry John Towers in 1976 and gave birth to their son John on October 4 of that same year.  Several years after she and John divorced,  Jan met, fell in love with, and married Stephen Elliott. Jan and Steve were together for over 30 years.

In 1990, Janet's kidneys began to fail, a direct a result of Juvenile Diabetes. She was placed on the transplant list and underwent months of peritoneal dialysis.  During this time, all of Jan's immediate family members, as well as Steve, were tested to see if they were a match, but it was her Mother, Rosane, who provided the ultimate gift by giving Jan one of her own kidneys on July 10, 1991.  Many years later, Jan received a pancreas from an anonymous donor.   

Jan was a warm and loving daughter, sister, mother, wife, grandmother, cousin, aunt, and friend.  Despite spending the vast majority of her life battling the debilitating side effects of Juvenile Diabetes, she never let the disease define her.  She was beautiful and brave, silly and stubborn.  She loved music, nature, and dirty jokes (although she frequently got the punchlines wrong).   She was a fan of Dark Shadows, The Three Stooges, Alf, and Tom (and Davy!) Jones.  Jan acquired (attracted?) a menagerie of animals over the years, including parakeets, dogs, cats, turtles, rabbits, roosters and chickens. She once found a baby squirrel and bottle-fed it back to health.  At one point, she and Steve dabbled in beekeeping and generously shared their bees' honey with everyone. She grew the most beautiful sunflowers. She loved the smell of freesias and the color purple. She made inspirational bracelets for her family and friends, with sentiments such as "Donate Life", "Live to Give" and "Be a Blessing".  Besides her sense of humor and her kindness, perhaps the most important quality that Jan possessed was unwavering hope, an endless optimism that things would always get better.  And the ability to make us laugh...boy oh boy, could she make us laugh!

Janet spent the last 31 years working at the Runnemede Acme, where her coworkers remember her as, simply, fun. 

Our lives will always be full if our hearts are always giving.

--Anonymous