Community activist in Broadview Park
Jan Washburn, a community activist and pioneer of the Broadview Park neighborhood near Fort Lauderdale, has died. She was 90, her daughter said.
A transplant from Massachusetts, she and her late husband, Jack Washburn, settled in the unincorporated area of Broadview Park, west of U.S. 441, in 1955. The pair co-founded the neighborhood’s civic association in 1956 and she never retired.
“She was steeped in the idea of community involvement and service to the community,” said her daughter Linda Becker, which included leading food drives. “Shewas a very generous, caring person. I don’t think I ever met anybody who didn’t love her.”
Becker said among her mother’s greatest achievements was lobbying officials to build a chain-link cover around the highway overpass at South Plantation High school.
She said Mrs. Washburn was walking home from church one day in the 1970s — the only time she didn’t drive— andwas shocked at the lowwall, which she saw as a tragedywaiting to happen.
“She said there was no protection whatsoever,” Becker said. “You could just lean over and go right over.”
“She always said she was meant to walk home that day.”
Janice “Jan” Prince was born in Brockton, Mass., on Oct. 13, 1926. She graduated fromBrockton High School in 1943, where she studied German “because she liked the teacher,” her daughter said.
After moving to Broward, she taught English and German at Everglades Junior High School and at South Broward High School for several years, and on the side translated Germandocuments forPolishHolocaust survivors.
Daniel Fitzgerald, the current president of the civic association, said Mrs. Washburn was planning on retiring from the board in June. He said she is best known for lobbying for the construction of the neighborhood’s fire station.
“She was amazing,” he said. “Till this day, she’s the one that kept the civic association around.”
The community planned to honor her by naming a neighborhood park under construction as “Washburn Park” but was keeping it a surprise until it opened this summer.
“We never got a to tell her,” he said.
The funeral will be in July in Plantation after two grandchildren return home from China.
In addition to Becker, of Parkland, Mrs. Washburn is survived by daughter Heather Tarpley, of Little Rock, Ark., and son, John Washburn, of Savannah, Okla.; eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. chance
lhuriash@sunsentinel.com, 954-572-2008 or Twitter @LisaHuriash