Mary Jane Beltran, 63, nursing professor

Mary Jane Beltran, a nursing professor who loved to sew, knit, cook and read, died Nov. 27 at the Crescent Manor Care Center in Bennington, Vt., after a long illness. She was 63, the wife of Ernesto G. Beltran, and lived in Ridgefield and on Lake St. Catherine in Poultney, Vt.
Mrs. Beltran was born on Sept. 10, 1938 in West Lebanon, N.H., the daughter of the late Wells and Priscilla Blanchard Hadley. When she was six, her family moved to Poultney, Vt. She cherished childhood memories of summers spent at nearby Lake St. Catherine, and passed on this love to her husband and sons when they acquired a vacation home there in 1965.
“We moved around quite a bit during my career,” Mr. Beltran said. “But that place in Vermont ... has always been a constant for the boys and us. We’d spend our summers there. She’d even pack up the station wagon, and wait for the boys the last day of school — pick them up and go.”
After her illness the family replaced the old summer home with a year-round handicapped accessible house, built by a neighbor’s son she used to baby-sit for. She enjoyed sitting on her deck in her wheelchair, looking out at the lake. “One of our neighbors said she used to hold court from the deck,” Mr. Beltran said, “because the neighbors would come around and the kids would play, and she’d talk to neighbors.”
A 1956 graduate of Poultney High School, she received her bachelor of science degree from the University of Vermont School of Nursing in 1960. She was married July 9, 1960, in Poultney.
After working as a hospital staff nurse she continued on to graduate school, obtaining two master’s degrees, in nursing and in nursing education, from Teachers’ College, Columbia University. Mrs. Beltran taught medical and surgical nursing at Rutgers University in New Jersey and the University of Connecticut at Storrs.
The Beltrans moved to Ridgefield in 1975 and she taught for several years at Western Connecticut State University and served on several university and departmental committees, notably as a leader in curriculum development for the baccalaureate nursing degree accreditation program. Mrs. Beltran co-authored a book, Clinical Nursing Interventions with Critical Elements, published by Wiley.
“She loved classroom and clinical contact with her students,” Mr. Beltran said. “I think when she stopped teaching, one thing that she missed most was the interaction and intellectual challenges she enjoyed with her students.”
Mrs. Beltran was active in the Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church. She was one of the original instructors in the Bethel Bible Series, and until her illness prevented her further participation, was involved in the hospital/home bound visitation ministries.
She was a member of the American Association of University Professors, the National League of Nursing, Connecticut Nurses’ Association, and the Alpha Chapter of the Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honor Society.
She volunteered for the Visiting Nurse Association at events such as blood drives and health day screenings. Later, when she was ill, the VNA helped care for her.
“She loved to sew, knit and read,” her husband said. “She liked to collect original recipes. Her joy in cooking and sewing she learned from her grandmother, Georgia Blanchard.”
Besides her husband, she is survived by two sons, Gerald Wells Beltran of Lee, Mass., and Timothy Clarke Beltran of Queens, N.Y., their respective wives Laura and Martha, and two grandchildren, Leah Beltran and Cian Beltran.
A memorial service to celebrate the life of Mary Jane Beltran will be conducted on Saturday, Dec. 15, at 1:30 p.m. at the Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church in Ridgefield.
Contributions in Mrs. Beltran’s memory may be made to the Ridgefield Visiting Nurses’ Association at 90 East Ridge, Ridgefield, CT 06877 or the Ridgefield Fire Department Ambulance Fund, 6 Catoonah Street, Ridgefield, CT 06877.