Page created by: Ilse Gayl

Jane H. Pejsa lived 1929-2019 and had an extraordinarily full life. She spent most of her life in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she was born, went to school at Carleton College to study math and German, and became one of the first computer programmers in an industry that was just becoming. Jane married former German POW Franz Gayl who had returned to the to study architecture after post-WWII repatriation to his Berlin home. Together in Minneapolis they built their first house with their own hands, produced two children, and settled on an island in Lake MInnetonka (Mahpiyata, formally named by Jane for a Lakota princess). After raising their children and a divorce, Jane married Arthur J. Pejsa, a physicist and engineer. She worked as a system analyst at Honeywell another decade. That was also when the storytelling urge struck her. Jane's books were conceived and written one at a time over more than 40 years, each centered on a person or family whose life somehow captivated her. Her subjects ranged from Gratia Countryman, the first woman head librarian in Minnesota, to Emily Peake, an Ojibwe Native American and human rights activist in Minneapolis, to Maria von Kleist, a Prussian matriarch whose family members were central in the European saga 1870 to 1950, to Michael Romanoff, the con man who created Romanoff's Restaurant in Hollywood where the Rat Pack and other stars of the '50s and '60s hung out. Although her beloved Art died first, Jane remained productive into her mid-80s and would have kept writing, but her last few years were marred by the onset of Parkinson's disease, a scourge that also had affected her father in his later years. With medication Jane scavenged some extra time, but in the end the disease won. Jane is survived by her children, Ilse and Franz, three stepchildren Jim, Anita, and Jack, two grandchildren, two step grandchildren, a great-grandchild, and five step great-grandchildren. All her family and friends miss her and celebrate her rich contributions.