Lasting Memories

Jane Louise Goraj
1916-Aug. 7, 2010
Palo Alto, California

Jane Taylor Goraj, 94, a resident of Palo Alto, died Aug. 7, 2010.

She was born Jane Louise Taylor in Buffalo, N.Y., to Etha and Ralph Taylor. She was intellectually gifted, always eager to learn new things, especially techniques for healing.

She graduated from Wellesley College with1935 and received her master's degree in speech pathology from San Jose State College in 1960, a California State teaching credential in 1964, and a master's in social welfare at U.C. Berkeley in 1966. In addition, she continued to attend classes and seminars on counseling, speech pathology and many other subjects throughout her life, often sharing what she had learned in formal sessions with colleagues.

She was a talented actress, appearing in many well-reviewed off-Broadway productions in New York City from 1935 to 1942. She married the actor Howard Da Silva in 194l and they had one son, Peter Da Silva. She taught in New York's Downtown Community School from 1945-1948. Moving to San Francisco in 1949, she hosted a popular live radio news and talk show on station KCBS from 1949 to 1955. She interviewed Edward R. Murrow, Lucy and Desi Arnaz and many other people of national and regional importance. In 1949, she married Al Hawke and helped to raise his daughter Florita Brill, who became her lifelong friend.

She became a speech and hearing therapist for the Los Altos school district from 1959 to 1964, also teaching a course in speech pathology at San Jose State, in 1969 and 1973. Always progressive politically and socially, she volunteered as a community organizer in Appalachia, in West Virginia, in 1966.

She spoke out against McCarthyism, for Civil Rights, and against both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. She became a psychiatric social worker in the Santa Clara Community Mental Health clinics in San Jose and Sunnyvale from 1966 to 1973, where she helped to pioneer many treatment methods, including crisis-group therapy. She published a paper on "Stuttering Therapy as Crisis Intervention" in the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders in 1974.

Her marriage to Frank Goraj in 1955 was a long and happy one, lasting until his death in 2006 They lived and worked in New Zealand, she as a psychiatric social worker in Sunnyside Hospital, Christchurch, in 1974-75. They moved to Australia, where she became student supervisor at Gairdner Hospital, in Perth, from 1975-1978. Returning to Palo Alto, Jane and Frank enjoyed many years of active retirement, much of it devoted to preserving the natural environment.

Her son, Peter De Silva, and caretaker, Kalo Sharkey, were with her when she died.