Jean Ann (Fesler) Wood was born November 4, 1944, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the daughter of Paul W. and Opal Irene (Patterson) Fesler of Columbia City.

She died in Plano, Texas, on January 13, 2023. A graduate of Columbia City Joint High School, she received her B.A. degree in elementary education from the University of Denver, where she met her husband-to-be, Charles M. Wood. They were married in September 1966. They subsequently lived in Boston, Massachusetts, and New Haven, Connecticut (where daughter Leslie Anne was born), while her husband pursued graduate studies. Later moves took them back to Colorado and to Wyoming, and in 1976 to Dallas. She taught school in Quincy, Massachusetts and in New Haven, and later in Dallas and Richardson, Texas, retiring in 2011.

She was a lifelong member of The United Methodist Church, active as an educator, musician, leader, and licensed lay speaker in local congregations, as a lay member of the North Texas Annual Conference for over forty years, and as a member and chair of the Conference Board of Trustees and of its Committee on the Status and Role of Women. She had a particular commitment to the full participation of women in leadership and was a mentor and example to many. Surviving relatives include her mother Irene Fesler of Columbia City; a brother Garry Dean Fesler of Fort Myers, Florida; her husband Charles of Dallas; and their daughter Leslie Anne Rogers, son-in-law Leslie C. B. Rogers, and granddaughter Anneliese Rei Rogers of Tokyo, Japan. She was preceded in death by her father Paul Fesler, and a brother Jerry Lee Fesler.

Memorials in Jean's honor may be made to the CCJHS Class of 1963 Scholarship Fund in care of the Whitley County Community Foundation.