Patterson Cemetery District, Stanislaus County, CA 

Submitted by Gale Stroud and Burta Herger 26 Aug 2007

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Gail Victoria J and Katharine 031231 p4
Life Meant Community Service;  Victoria Jeans grew up the third of seven children in Patterson.
The Oregonian Portland--   For Victoria Jeans Gail and her 24 year old daughter, Katharine, community service was a
way of life.  Victoria, 51, worked with non-profits in California and Oregon for three decades, most recently as the chief
financial officer for the Portland Schools Foundation.  And, one day a week, she served as a spiritual director, advising
people on their religious explorations.  Katharine, a Smith College graduate, wanted to change the world.  For her, that
meant working in the slums of Calcutta, serving in the Peace Corps in Morocco and persuading high school students at her
alma mater to volunteer.  They died Sunday morning when their car hit ice, spun out of control on U.S. 26 near Warm
Springs and collided with a sport-utility vehicle. The SUV?s driver, Daniel Trumps, and his wife suffered minor injuries,
Warm Springs police said.  Victoria and Katharine, known as Kate, were on their way to Victoria?s sister?s 50th
birthday celebration in Bend, Ore.  The crash, still under investigation by Warm Springs police, tore into one of
Portland?s most activist families, and punched a hole in hundreds of lives the pair touched.  Kevin Jeans Gail, Victoria?s
husband, is chief of staff to Portland Commissioner Jim Francesconi.  They had been married for 25 years and worked on
a series of community projects, including helping form and lead the former Portland Organizing Project, a coalition of
churches formed to push for social change.  Kevin Gail and the couple?s two sons -- Conor, 16, and Sean, 21 - were at
home at the time of the crash.  Speaking at his Northeast Portland home on Monday, Kevin Gail said his wife was the
family?s spiritual center and his daughter was the fiery go-getter.  "Kate had great drive and great energy," he said.
Victoria walked with people on their spiritual journey. The world would always come away from an experience with 
them feeling enriched
San Francisco. The first night they went out, Kevin recalls, Victoria told him that she loved him. "But if you knew her,
you?d know she loved everybody," he said. "She was all about love."  Less than a year later, they married and she moved
to Portland where they both worked with Oregon Fair Share, a grass-roots organizing group.  Kate, their oldest child,
attended St. Mary?s Academy in downtown Portland, taking the school?s focus on community service to heart and
developing a travel bug that saw her visit five continents by age 22.  A few nights before the accident, Kori Pienovi and
three other friends from Kate?s high school days dined out with Victoria and Kate.  "When you talk about living life to
the fullest, they actually did it," said Pienovi, who traveled to Calcutta with Kate three  years ago to work alongside
Mother Teresa?s Missionary Sisters of Charity in an orphanage and a home for the dying.  "They actually lived every day
as if something like this could happen."  Pienovi and her friends spent Monday reading through the scores of narrative e-
mails that Kate had sent over the years. from Moroccan villages to New York City, where she started her latest job at
Teach For America in October.  After graduation, Kate began serving with the Peace Corps in Morocco in 2001, learning
Arabic in a six week crash course.  The war in Iraq cut short her stint in spring 2003. While in Morocco, she won a grant
from the U S Agency for International Development to build a health clinic and birthing center in a remote village.
Madeleine Mader, a friend of the Jeans Gails and a Peace Corps worker in Africa for 10 years said "I?ve known hundreds
of your young people and I used to supervise hundreds of Peace Corps volunteers, and it?s not an exaggeration to say that
she was the brightest star."  Victoria attended UCLA, but left the school at age 19 after her father died.  She moved to
Corvallis and attended Oregon State University but didn't finish, instead opting for the job with the alliance in San
Francisco.  Today, her desk at the Portland Schools Foundation is crowded with inspirational sayings and pictures of her
family.  Leslie Rennie-Hill, a senior program officer, said the foundation's 10 employees always start meetings with a
check-in on each person's personal life.   "Her stories at check-in were always something related to her children or her
husband," Rennie-Hill said.  "That's who she would talk about.  They were a team."
Copyrighted article published Dec. 30.   Reprinted with permission from "The Oregonian".