Jane Norris, wife of Colorado Springs rancher and businessman Robert Norris and a philanthropist, died Jan. 12 while in hospice care. She was 88.

A celebration of life is scheduled for 2 p.m. Tuesday at Shrine of Remembrance Funeral Home, 1730 E. Fountain Blvd.

Norris was born April 28, 1927, in Tacoma, Wash., to Robert and Carole Wright. She graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., in 1950 and married Robert Norris a month later in Elgin, Ill.

“I was 15 and she was 17, and I told her on the day I met her in 1944 that I would marry her on June 10, 1950. We hit the year and month, but had to change the date” for Jane to graduate, Robert Norris said Monday. “It’s been a good run. We were married 65 years and would have hit 66 in June. We had a great time and always kept talking to each other.”

Sinus trouble for Robert Norris prompted the couple to move to Colorado and buy a ranch near Fort Collins in 1953. They sold the ranch two years later to buy a larger ranch near Guffey. Weather prompted them to move to a lower elevation in 1957, and they started accumulating land for what would become the T-Cross Ranch in the Black Forest area. The couple later moved to The Broadmoor area and also owned a winter home in the Phoenix suburb of Paradise Valley.

In Colorado Springs, the Norris-Penrose Event Center is named for the family to recognize their “considerable donation” to the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo Foundation Board, which bought the center in 2005 from El Paso County and completed a major renovation and expansion that allowed the center to host many more events.

Jane Norris served on many nonprofit boards, including Children’s Memorial Hospital and Colorado Festival of World Theatre in Colorado Springs, Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., and the Arizona Heart Institute in Payson, Ariz. As a philanthropist, she also supported the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Endowment Fund, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Goodwill Industries of Colorado Springs, the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region, the Penrose-St. Francis Health Foundation, Salvation Army and many other charities in the Fort Collins, Phoenix and St. Charles, Ill., areas.

“Jane was an elegant and generous woman. Particularly in the medical field, her philanthropy made a great difference both locally and nationally,” Mayor John Suthers said Monday.

She is survived by her husband, Robert; children Steve Norris and Leslie Penkhus, both of Colorado Springs; Carole Sondrup of Windsor and Bobby Norris of Fort Worth, Texas; 13 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Roundup for Autism at roundupforautism.org.

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