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Jean Ward Bone, who served the Menlo Park Historical Association devotedly for many years, died Jan. 6 at Canyon House in Menlo Park after a long illness. She was 89.
Ms. Bone was born in Manila in the Philippine Islands, where her father, Adrian F. Ward, was director of welfare for the Knights of Columbus at the U.S. Army base in World War I. In 1925 the family moved to Menlo Park, where Mr. Ward worked at the veterans hospital and later became health and welfare director for San Mateo County.
Ms. Bone graduated from St. Joseph’s Elementary School in Atherton, Mercy High School in Burlingame, and San Jose State University, where she received a bachelor of arts degree in 1941.
She worked as an administrative secretary at Dibble Hospital and at Ames Aeronautical Laboratory in Mountain View until joining the U.S. State Department. In the 1950s and 1960s, she worked at embassies in Rio de Janeiro, Saigon, Teheran, Salisbury (Rhodesia) and Ouagadougou, Africa, sometimes serving as a private secretary to ambassadors.
She married Robert Bone, also a State Department employee, in Saigon in 1956. In 1968 Mr. Bone died while on furlough in Menlo Park. Ms. Bone then worked for Varian Associates in Palo Alto until retiring in 1981.
After retiring, she was active in many local organizations including the chaplaincy service at Stanford Medical Center; Oakwood, a retirement home and infirmary for the Religious of the Sacred Heart in Atherton; and, especially, the Menlo Park Historical Association. She was proud to receive an emeritus award from the association at her retirement, says her brother, Adrian Ward.
Throughout her lifetime, she was interested in travel, literature, sports and her religion, and she had great affection for friends, says Mr. Ward, her only survivor.
Following a Mass of Christian burial on Jan. 9, Ms. Bone was buried at her family’s plot at Santa Clara Mission Cemetery.
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