Lane, Lura H., 64, July 14, 2013. A memorial service will be held at Convent St. Baptist in Mendham, New Jersey on July 26.
Mendham, NJ – Lura Hastings Lane passed away peacefully on July 14, 2013, in Convent St. John Baptist, in the loving and attentive company of Convent Sisters. As a Sister herself, Sister Lura Grace, Lura held the position of the convent’s Assistant Mother Superior.
Born on February 21, 1949, Lura grew up in Houlton, ME, as Lura Jean Stewart, with her parents, Leigh and Vernabelle Stewart and her brother Ted (Edward). She attended Houlton schools, then attended and graduated from Nasson College in Springvale, Maine.
She is survived by her son, Scott Hastings, and his wife, Lisa, in New York City; by her brother, Ted, his wife Linda, and their son, Ian and daughter, Rebecca, in Ithaca, NY; by her brother, Tunkie (Edwin) Towers and his wife, Terry, in Camillus, NY; by her former husband, John Hastings III, in Albany, NY; by her former husband, Gordon Lane, in Seabrook, NH; by her cousin, Brian Stewart, and his wife, Martha, in Houlton; by her cousin, Jane Mercier, and her husband, David, in Vancouver, Washington, and their sons, Mathew, Seth, and Adam and their wives and children; by her cousin, Bob Stewart, and his wife, Karen, in Waterville, ME, and their daughter, Kasey; and by her cousin, Hal Stewart and his children, in Presque Isle, ME.
Her life was extraordinarily varied. From clerical worker to business manager to Chamber of Commerce Director to banker to book store owner to novelist to Episcopal nun – and with shorter-term jobs far too numerous to list in between these positions – while living for different stretches of time and while raising her son in Maine, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New Jersey.
Houlton residents may remember her especially well for her management of the Houlton Chamber of Commerce, and for Volumes, the book store she started and which still thrives today under different management.
To her every endeavor she brought incredible competence, high intelligence, great energy and enthusiasm, wonderful humor, and good will. An avid, constant, lifelong reader and collector of books, she impressed all who knew her with her cultural range and diversity of passionate interests.
Big-hearted, a lover of and frequent caregiver to animals, and capable of great warmth and empathy, she found some of her deepest fulfillment as a nun when working in homeless shelters in both Morristown, NJ, and New York City. It might very well be said that for most of her life, in one way or another, it was the down-and-out, the marginalized, the mistreated of the world, who were Lura’s most abiding and heartfelt concern.
A memorial service for Sister Lura Grace will be held at Convent St. John Baptist in Mendham, New Jersey, on July 26.
