Janet Ruth Wright
April 13, 1933-June 15, 2025
Palo Alto, California

Janet Ruth Stein Wright passed away on June 15, 2025 with her daughter by her side. She was born on April 13, 1933, in Berkeley, California, the daughter of Louis and Mildred Stein, and grew up surrounded by family and friends. She was proud to be the descendent of 19th-century Bay Area pioneers: her paternal grandparents were German immigrants to Berkeley, and her maternal grandmother was born in Menlo Park. After graduating from El Cerrito High School, Janet attended Stanford (B.A. ’55, Sociology). She married Melvin Wright and they settled in Los Altos, where they raised two daughters.

After her divorce, Janet moved to Palo Alto and went back to work. She was a legal secretary for a few years, before becoming a department administrator in the then small Computer Science department at Stanford. She flourished in that role and made great friends with faculty and graduate students alike. Eventually, she moved to the Geology Department and served as the department’s lead administrator for many years, a position that suited her organizational skills and social acumen.

She had a life-long love of travel and visited Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, England, Ireland, Scotland, France, as well as much of the U.S. She traveled with family and friends, by plane, train, ship, and canal boat. Janet was a life-long learner and enthusiastic supporter of the performing and visual arts. Both before and after she retired, she had season tickets to San Francisco’s opera, ballet, and symphony. She sang in the chorus for West Bay Opera for a time and continued to volunteer with them for years. She also collected California art, and she loved going to the movies and the theatre with friends, remembering the names of all the actors for years.

In 2016, Janet moved to Channing House (Palo Alto) and made many new friends. She embraced everything about her new life with gusto, which was her approach to most things in life. Her family thanks the staff at Channing House for their care during her last three years following her strokes.

Left to cherish Janet’s memory are her daughter Lesley Wright (Donald Doe), her much loved grandchildren Nathaniel Wright-Simmons (Jackie Hunter) and Georgia (Sam) Gould, her step-granddaughter Rebecca Doe, and her great-grandchildren Louisa and Charlotte Gould, along with her nieces Martina Klingenfuss and Andrea (Dwayne) King and extended family. Those who knew her will miss her wit, her impressive memory, her recollection of family and Bay Area history, her sense of humor, and her love.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Louis Lorenz Stein and Mildred Slater Stein, her brother Dr. Robert Stein and her sister-in-law Anita Schmidt Stein, and her daughter Elizabeth Lee Wright. There will be a celebration of her life at a later date. She asks that donations in her memory be made to the Diabetic Youth Foundation or the Sempervirens Fund.