Shelter Island Reporter obituary: Jane Evans Carreyrou

Jane Evans Carreyrou, 84, of Paris, France and Shelter Island, N.Y., passed away on April 18, 2025.

Jane was born on July 23, 1940 to Dr. John A. and Mrs. Dorothy R. Evans in New York City. She attended high school at Dominican Academy in Manhattan, where she won citywide contests in Latin. She went on to study at Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y. before transferring to the University of Miami. When she graduated, rather than stick around for commencement exercises, she decamped to California where she enrolled at Stanford University and earned masters degrees in French and Education. After Stanford, she taught French to high school students in Palo Alto and became an expert at parking her sky-blue Porsche 912 in tight spaces on the steep hills of San Francisco.

Jane’s passion for all things French was cemented when she met a young French journalist named Gérard Carreyrou at a reception in San Francisco in 1970. He was a member of the press corps trailing French President Georges Pompidou on a state visit to the U.S. They fell in love and wed the following year. Jane moved to Paris, which became her primary home.

Her other cherished home was Shelter Island. After working for the French pop singer Claude François, Jane became an English professor at several French universities, which allowed her to have the summers off. Come June every year, she boarded a flight to New York with her two children in tow and made her annual pilgrimage to the Island. Her parents had purchased a house there in 1953, and she and Gérard bought their own summer cottage on Grand Avenue in 1978.

Her summers on Shelter Island were the highlight of Jane’s life. An avid runner, she often jogged from her house in the Heights to Dering Harbor and back. (She also ran two Paris marathons.) One summer day, a French family visiting the Island was stunned to recognize the woman they frequently saw running around the Eiffel Tower jog by Piccozzi’s gas station. They called her “la dame avec le bandana qui fait du jogging” (“the jogger with the bandana”).

She later took up golf and became an enthusiastic member of Gardiner’s Bay Country Club, where she bonded with friends and her sister, Susan, during long days on the golf course. She also loved to walk down from her house to the Beach Club, where she read in a beach chair while her grandchildren played in the sand nearby.

Jane was pre-deceased by her sister, Linda Evans Franklin, last year. She is survived by her two other siblings, John T. Evans and Dr. Susan Evans; by her two children, John and Alexandra Carreyrou; and by her three grandchildren: Sebastian, Jack and Francesca Carreyrou.

A joyous Memorial Service in Jane’s honor will be held on Shelter Island this summer.