Rye Couple is Bonded by Five Decades of Marriage and a Love of Volunteerism

Rye’s John and Bess June Lane have no trouble remembering their wedding date –it’s the day after Valentine’s Day, Feb. 15, 1958.

They are still as much in love with each other now as they were then.

And they have been carrying on a love affair with Rye almost from the day they moved here in 1972.

They are, for example, the guiding spirits behind a number of charitable causes.

Their charitable ventures range from POTS (Part of the Solution)—an effort that helps support the needy in the Fordham Road area of the Bronx—to Helping Hands, which, among other things, ensures backpacks are filled with school supplies for kids in nearby Port Chester.

“We’ve never been into what I call ‘The Lady Bountiful’ school of charity. We just saw things that had to be done, and we did it,” Bess June said.

Getting things done with no muss, no fuss represents the Lanes lifestyle because they both grew up in professions where meeting deadlines was part of their lives.

Bess June was an advertising copywriter in Chicago when she met John, then a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. They married shortly thereafter and moved to what she laughingly remembers as “the geographically undesirable” part of the Windy City.

John moved the Lanes up the economic ladder when he left print journalism to go into TV news reporting with CBS. He was soon promoted to news director, and transferred to New York City.

The Lanes moved to Rye in 1972 for “the usual reasons—we heard it was a great community, had great schools, had a great church, was near Long Island Sound and had an easy commute into the city,” Bess June recalled. Their four children—Clement, Virginia, Diane and Mary Katherine, now ranging in age from 44 to 50—went through the Rye school system.

John was a Jesuit product out of Loyola. Bess June had graduated from Minnesota’s College of Saint Theresa, so they almost immediately became involved with various outreach programs at Rye’s Church of the Resurrection.

The Lanes got involved with volunteer efforts because of fellow church members Paul Hackett and his wife, Nan. At the outset, that meant the Lanes and Hacketts were soon at the forefront of Resurrection’s POTS program.

That meant, among other things, that they lined up volunteers and headed the programs that provided Thanksgiving and Christmas meals for the needy at POTS headquarters off the Fordham University campus on Webster Avenue.

The Lanes and their family never had a holiday meal at home on those dates because they were busy setting the tables, serving the meals, even picking up the food at local supermarkets to provide holiday meals through the POTS program.

John practically ran a shuttle service, bringing food from Rye to POTS, making a daily run to local donor supermarkets and packing up the canned goods and sundries left at Resurrection so he could bring them back to the Bronx.

Around that time, people were really starting to pay attention to the plight of the homeless, Bess June remembers, so she and John helped organize various Rye projects to help them, including food and clothing donation drives.

She also helped organize the Helping Hands project that donates school supplies and backpacks to needy kids in nearby communities such as White Plains and Port Chester, has taught English as a Second language in Port Chester, and works with Twig, a charity supporting local healthcare. 

She also has served on various charitable boards, as has John. She summarizes all that charitable work and community outreach by saying “we just tried to do lots of good stuff that had to be done.”

And now the Lanes “have passed the torch to a new and younger generation is how you might say it,” according to Bess June. “Wendy Seaver, for example, has taken on a lot of our POTS work with her husband, Tom.”

John has had three knee replacements, and after the second one wore out, his doctors ordered him to stop playing competitive singles tennis. So now he walks around four miles a day instead, jokingly saying he is trying “not to get too fat.” He also has Lymphoma, a compromised immune system, and has been undergoing extensive testing and treatment to beat that disease. He and Bess June place their trust in a higher power.

In two days—the day after Cupid’s holiday—the Lanes will celebrate their 53rd wedding anniversary, but even after all those Valentine’s days and anniversaries together, Bess June seemed amused and surprised by the question: “Do you have any suggestions on the secret of success for a long marriage?”

“That question never occurred to us,” she said. “We were in love when we got married. We are still in love now.”