Jeanne Adell Ojala, Professor Emerita of History at the University of Utah and a founding member and past president of the Western Society for French History, died at her home in Tempe, Arizona on March 2, 2020. She was eighty-six years old.

Born Jeanne Meline in Cloquet, Minnesota on September 1, 1933, Jeanne was raised by her grandmother and educated at a woman’s academy. After marriage to William (Bill) Ojala, Jeanne worked several years in Washington, D.C. while Bill served in the U.S. Navy. In 1958 Jeanne enrolled at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where she majored in history and English and graduated in 1961.

In 1963 Jeanne began graduate study in history at the Florida State University where her husband Bill was enrolled in the graduate program in English education. She focused on the field of French Revolutionary and Napoleonic studies under the direction of Professor Donald D. Horward, and her research dealt with a young French cavalry officer, Auguste Colbert. During her time at Florida State, Jeanne held graduate and teaching assistantships and an instructorship. After completing her masters thesis on Colbert, Jeanne undertook a lengthy research trip to France in 1967 where she worked in the original Colbert family papers. This research was the basis of her doctoral dissertation, which she completed in 1969. Jeanne was the second, after Gordon Bond, of forty-eight accomplished scholars who were awarded the Ph.D degree under Professor Horward’s direction. Her first book, , based on her dissertation, was published in 1979 by the University of Utah Press.

Jeanne was hired in 1969 by the department of history at the University of Utah where she remained for the rest of her thirty-year distinguished academic career, rising through the ranks to full professor. She gave her first historical presentation at the first conference of the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe in 1971 at the University of Georgia. Over the next forty years she continued to present research papers and commentary at conferences throughout the country and in Europe. Jeanne was a frequent presenter at conferences of the Western Society which she regarded with particular esteem. Her second book, co-authored with her husband, was , part of the Berg Series on Women’s Lives, published by Berg in 1992. She also published articles on women’s lives, gender and sexuality. Her ongoing research for a projected study of women expatriots in Paris in the 1920s, which emphasized such figures as Janet Flanner, was regrettably never completed.

A great-niece of Jules Meline, a major politician and sometime Prime Minister of France in the 1890s, Jeanne was also attracted to 20th century French history. She gave lectures on the history of Paris such as “City Without a Face,” “Paris in World War II,” and “Hemingway’s Paris.” She organized and taught OSHER classes annually for almost ten years at Arizona State University where her husband had taught until his death. Even after retirement she conducted research in Europe, and she remained an avid traveler taking cruises in Europe and the Mediterranean and enjoying holidays in Paris until 2019. In addition to her work with OSHER, Jeanne selflessly served for years as a volunteer at a hospital in Tempe, and almost to the time of her death she continued to volunteer at her local library.

Jeanne Ojala was predeceased by her husband and her son. Many friends, former students and fellow historians mourn her passing.

Donald. D. Horward, Professor Emeritus, Florida State University

Susan Conner

Hines Hall