James “Jim” Kay Hightower, a longtime Claremont resident, died on October 3, 2016 at the age of 79. Causes of death were advanced prostate cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
He was born March 22, 1937 in Kalamazoo, Michigan to Raymond Lee Hightower and Jeanne Matthews Hightower. His father was a professor of sociology at Kalamazoo College and his mother was an elementary school teacher and reading specialist. Academics were central in his family of three boys.
John Mann, former principal of Claremont High School, died peacefully at home in La Verne on August 17, 2016. He was 85 years old.
He was born on February 25, 1931 in his grandmother’s house in York, Nebraska and grew up in Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska. Mr. Mann attended York College in York, Nebraska, where he lettered in football all four years and earned All-Conference Honors his senior year.
Jane Barr, a longtime resident of the Mt. San Antonio Gardens retirement community in Claremont, died on August 7, 2016. She was 89.
She was born February 18, 1927 in Perth, Scotland to James and Catherine Hepburn. Dux (i.e., “top pupil”) of her graduating class in Perth Academy, Jane went on to study classics at Edinburgh University. She met her future husband, James Barr, on the first day of the academic year in 1945.
