Palm Beacher had passion for gardening
Garden Club member was avid sportswoman, traveler, philanthropist.
Janet “Jinky” Reynolds, a resident of Palm Beach for more than 75 years and one of the town’s Centennial Ambassadors, died June 26, 2017, in Palm Beach.
She was 94 years old.
Born Nov. 25, 1922 in Summit, N.J., she was the daughter of Paul Hutcheson Raymer and Judy (née Underhill) Raymer.
She grew up in New Jersey and New York City, attending the Town and Country School in Manhattan; Friends Academy in Locust Valley, N.Y.; Rosemary Hall in Greenwich; and Bennett College in Millbrook, N.Y.
She moved to Palm Beach in 1942 as the 19-year-old bride of Wiley Richard Reynolds, Jr. of Palm Beach, who would become president, chairman and director of the First National Bank of Palm Beach.
She followed her husband — then on assignment for the International Executive Service Corps — to his postings in the Philippines, Indonesia, Turkey, and Taiwan.
At the time of Mr. Reynolds’ death in 2005, they had been married for 63 years.
“Jinky,” as she was affectionately known, was an active member of the Palm Beach community. For 65 years she was a member of the Garden Club of Palm Beach, serving as chairman of both the admissions and nominating committees. She also was conservation chairman and visiting gardens chairman for Zone VIII of the Garden Club of America.
She served as on the boards of the Rehabilitation Center for Children and Adults, founded by her mother-in-law and built on land donated by the Reynolds family; the Society of the Four Arts; Bennett College; Kenmore Plantation of the George Washington Foundation; and, with her husband, the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii.
Until late in her life, Jinky was an active outdoorswoman and traveler who fly-fished, camped, and rode more than 1,000 miles on horseback through the Canadian Rockies.
She was an American Society of Interior Designers-certified interior decorator.
She was a member of the Everglades, Seminole, and Bath and Tennis Club, of which her fatherin-law, Wiley R. Reynolds, Sr., was a founding member.
She is survived by four children, Wiley Richard Reynolds III, Suzanne Reynolds Bennison, Judith Underhill Reynolds and Thomas Hood Reynolds; five grandchildren Philip Reynolds, Christina Bennison Bryan, Juliana Bennison Battaglia, Wiley Richard Reynolds, Jr. and Celene Raymer Reynolds; four great-grandchildren, Finn and Paula Reynolds and Wilhelmus and Charlotte Bryan; and her half-siblings Victoria Elizabeth Raymer and Paul Hutcheson Raymer Jr.
A private inurnment will take place at the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea. A memorial service will take place at a later date.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Rehabilitation Center for Children and Adults or to Adopt-A-Family.