Longtime Trinity Church Princeton member Janice Pell dies at 93

Janice Phillips Pell died just before midnight on Flag Day, June 14, following a day of heavy winds, a brilliant sunset and a double rainbow. Jan was 93, a resident of Princeton and Pennington, and a member of Trinity Church for the last 45 years.

Raised in Short Hills, Jan attended the Kent Place School and Smith College before her family moved to New York City in 1951. There she met her husband John, a spirited and smart Princeton graduate from the Class of 1948. They were married in 1953 and lived the greatest love story for 59 years.

Jan had a short career in advertising at O.S. Tyson before the Pells moved to Short Hills to raise their family. In 1968 John was offered the opportunity to move to London England, a position he took as director of the Standard Bank responsible for 17 countries in Africa and the Middle East. Jan traveled below the Sahara and to the Middle East eight times in a liaison capacity with John on business. During this time, she wrote two long ‘impression’ essays of West and South Africa for the International Department of Chase Bank.

At home in London, Jan shifted her focus to mission work and counseling. She served as the head of the American Church in London’s Mission Guild with interests in Africa, Asia, the U.K., and the States, and served on the church vestry. She helped found the first Marriage Research Centre in England at the Central Middlesex Hospital, serving as one of the five trustees on the board for many years. In 1974 Jan undertook professional training as a psychotherapist for three years and proceeded to help clients through a wide range of challenges including trauma faced from concentration camp internment during World War II. In 1975 Jan chaired the British American Ball which funds the British American Associates’ lecture foundation, an organization that exchanges lecturers between the UK and U.S. Jan and John served on the board of directors of this foundation for ten years.

1979 brought the Pells back to the U.S. They settled in Princeton to share their next chapter with Princeton alumni friends. Jan and John enjoyed the breadth of activities Princeton had to offer from university football games to the communities they joined at Trinity Church, the Nassau Club, and the Bedens Brook Club. Separately Jan was an active member of the Women’s Investment Group, Present Day Club, and the Stony Brook Garden Club.

As a one-year swan song to John’s banking career, the couple moved to Hong Kong, China in 1992, where John was president of the Bank of Asia. During this time Jan served on the St. John’s Cathedral mission committee responsible for prisoners returning from China.

In life there are flowers, weeds and gardeners and Jan Pell was most definitely a gardener. She grew and nurtured not only her family and a wide group of friends but built a vast garden at their home on Westcott Road. She enjoyed entertaining the Princeton Class of 1948 in the garden for reunions, counseling friends over a cup of tea on the back patio and opening her garden for tours. Jan loved her time as a member of Stony Brook Garden Club tremendously and her friends of all generations that she made there.

When Jan wasn’t in her garden, she was often taking trips with clients to the Philadelphia Design Center. Jan Pell Interiors was launched in 1982 and she worked with clients on their interior design needs for the next 23 years.

Over the years, Jan served on the board of directors of Trinity Counseling Service and was an active volunteer at the YWCA extension program as a reader at the Riverside School. At Trinity Church, Jan helped build the Trinity Memorial Garden, donated her famous lemon whiskey cake each year to the Trinity Saint Nicholas Bazaar, and was a member of the Altar Guild. Reflecting on the Altar Guild, Jan often told the story of being the last person to leave and lock up the church one Christmas Eve following the midnight service, walking peacefully home to Westcott Road in the falling snow.

Predeceased by her husband John, she is survived by her three children and six grandchildren: Richard and Lisa Pell of Rye, New York, and daughters Roxanna and Lila; Wil and Sandy de Groot of Frenchtown, and children Sam, Lucinda and stepchildren Veronique, Eric and Alex; Leslie Pell of Pennington, and children Kate and Gibson Linnehan. Her niece Sarah Phillips and husband Tom Hatch of Wilton, Connecticut, and their son Nicholas, as well as her nephew James T. Phillips III of Georgia.

The family is eternally grateful to Dr. Regan Tuder for watching over their mom, and to Lydia Konedu and Cecile Nonez for their nurturing care.

A memorial service will be held at Trinity Church 33 Mercer Street Princeton, on Tuesday July 9th at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests a donation to Center at 353 center353.org (formerly Trinity Counseling Service) or the Alzheimer’s Foundation.