We have lost a champion and a delightful, irrepressible friend with the passing of Jane “Kitchie” Tolleson (Foundation Council 2012-2020) on July 22, 2020.
A pillar of the Charlottesville community and champion of many educational and civic causes, Kitchie served on the Board of Stuart Hall School, Sweet Briar College, the University of Virginia Law School Business Advisory Council and Alumnae Council, and Monticello’s Thomas Jefferson Foundation. After starting a Charlottesville breeding and racing stable with her husband, she founded a pioneering national catalog business – “The Very Thing.”Fueled by an inexhaustible supply of energy, Kitchie was a veritable perpetual motion machine. Her imagination and interests knew no bounds and touched countless lives. Kitchie’s enthusiasm for all things good and virtuous was contagious. At times she seemed like a combination of a whirling dervish and a windup doll out of control.
But the characteristic I most associate with her and will most remember her by was fun. Fun. Fun. Fun. She was always fun to be with and away had a way of making everybody she associated with feel good about everything.
No one was more enthusiastic about the life-changing potential of focused ultrasound.
Kitchie will be dearly missed. We offer our condolences to her loved ones.
Neal