Jane Whitehead has no place she could call home in her early years, courtesy of her father’s military career, during which the family moved as Uncle Sam directed.
“I’m a Navy brat, all over the East Coast; Charleston, S.C., Norfolk, Va., summers in Macon, then we moved to Massachusetts.”
A Jones Countian now for about 30 years, Whitehead said her family settled down when she was in the third grade, and she lived in one place thereafter through high school.
Following graduation and college, Whitehead earned her certification as an EMT at Santta Maria Hospital, “because I like medicine,” she declared, then, after a pause, added “but, another part of it was a bet.
“Because at that time only men were EMTs,” she explained. “They were firefighters, policemen, things like that. Women weren’t really in the field. And, I was one of the first women to break that glass ceiling. I worked with about 100 men, and I had to pay my dues.
“You had to prove you were worthy, prove you could keep up with the guys.”
Prior to leaving Massachusetts, Whitehead became a mother, but her child-birthing experiences were unusual – and even more unfortunate.
“I have three children, three of six,” she said.
Whitehead gave birth to three sets of twins. The first pair, two boys, survived and live in Maine and New Hampshire now. Neither of the second set survived. The first child in the third set died, “too little.”
The second twin, a daughter, was born two months later, but not without complications.
“She had Hylands membrane disorder,” Whitehead recalled, “the same as President Kennedy’s baby that died had, and she survived.”
The daughter ultimately came to Georgia with her mother and lives in Macon now.
“I can remember that pain so well,” the mother said. “But I try not to dwell on it. There is a reason for everything.”
Whitehead and her daughter came to Georgia in 1985 and moved to Jones County in 1993.
“Bought property here, and that was because of the school system.”
Whitehead commented that her interest in history influenced her to obtain her certification as a paralegal in 1997, and she went to work shortly thereafter for the Newberry law firm in Gray, specializing in real estate work, specifically title searches.
She has been busy, to say the least. The paralegal calculated that she has done “close to 13,000 title searches.” That equates to an average of almost two title certificates daily for 26 years, all for the same law firm.
Whitehead said title work regarding churches and cemeteries interest her, primarily due to the history.
“You have to go back to the 1800s when the large landowners would give their slaves an acre of land so they could have a church and cemetery,” she declared. “Then, trying to find the cemeteries, I would use old plats, cemetery deeds, and the book by Earl Colvin about Jones County cemeteries.”
Whitehead acknowledged that she has always been an active person, and when she moved here, she continued two hobbies that date back to Massachusetts. One started out on the water.
“Of course in the winter, the lake would freeze over,” she pointed out. “My sister was a figure skater. My younger brother played ice hockey. I wasn’t good at figure skating, so I would just race.
“I watched how they did it in the Olympics, and I said ‘Ok, I can do that’.” So, she did, but not competitively. “I wasn’t that good.”
When she moved to Jones County, Whitehead had to make an adjustment.
“There’s not too much ice skating down here. So, I traded in the ice skates – which I still have – and got roller blades.”
It didn’t matter to Whitehead that she was asked not to do that on the track at the local high school.
“I would go very early in the morning when no one was around and roller blade,” she admitted. “Every once in a while, I’d come across walkers. That track is a quarter-mile track, and I could get around that track four times before the walkers could get around it once. That’s speed skating.”
Whitehead said she would roller blade as often as possible until she broke her hip about 10 years ago and was forced to give up that activity.
She refused, however, to give up her other hobby, more appropriately referred to as a passion: horses.
“I rode for the first time when I was 3. My parents took me to ride ponies,” Whitehead recalled. “I got my first horse when I was 16. I didn’t have a bridle. I used hay strings on a halter. That was my bridle, and I rode bareback.”
When she moved to Georgia, she brought one horse with her. She rode at Wesleyan College and in a three-day event at LaGrange.
“One of the judges asked me if she could ride my horse.”
Whitehead remains an active rider. She took her current horse, ‘Tank’, to Fernandina Beach, Fla., once but decided that was too much traveling for a gallop on a two-mile beach. Now, she goes to the Saddlehorse Campground in Jasper County many weekends. Her horse trailer, though, is not just for her steed.
“I have water, electricity and a microwave, and I sleep in it,” she said, then added with a smile, “I go ‘glamping’. I’m not going to sleep in a camp, so I go ‘glamorous camping.’” As a part of her activities at the campground, the enthusiast utilizes another skill not possessed by most females.
“I am a certified sawyer by the U.S. Forest Service,” she said with a hint of pride. “That’s my thing to do. If a tree comes down, I take out my chainsaw and move it. I can’t cut trees down,” she added, “but if they’re down, I can cut them up and move them.”
Following the hip surgery, Whitehead was not as willing to give up horseback riding as she was roller blades, and she recounted how she worked at rehabbing the hip. She explained she would repeatedly swing her right leg over a couch to simulate mounting the horse.
When she went in for a 10-week check, the doctor asked her to put her foot on a stool that was short and adjacent to a bed.
“I put my foot on the bed, and he said ‘ok, you can ride, but only for 15 minutes’.”
The horse lover wasted no time. She made sure she was able, then mounted up.
“I rode for 15 minutes, just like he said,” she noted. “Then, I got off and walked for about 100 feet. Then I got back on and rode for another 15 minutes, I got off, walked, then rode again. He said 15 minutes, and that’s what I did, but he didn’t say total.”
She added that she followed that routine for two weekends, “then the third weekend I said the heck with it, and I rode for two hours.”
Whitehead was asked about her future with horses. She said Tank is now 16 years of age and pointed out her other two horses were around 30 when they died.
“I don’t know how long he will live or if I’ll be riding in another 10-12 years or longer,” she pondered. “Maybe we’ll see who goes first.”
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