Bridgewater, NJ – Janice Dowdy Hood, 88, of Bridgewater and Toms River, NJ, peacefully passed away Sunday, Feb. 11, 2018 at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital-Somerset in Somerville, NJ. Born in Rutherford, NJ on March 25, 1929, she was the daughter of the late Allen Edgar Dowdy and Vera Ruby Enstice.

Janice was happily married to Thomas Buchanan Hood, Sr. for 52 years before his passing in 2007. Together they raised two children: Thomas B. Hood, Jr. of Westport, CT, and Barbara Hood Benz of Branchburg, NJ.

Janice attended Rutherford High School (1946). She attended Columbia University School of Nursing, and Upsala College and graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford with a BA in history. While studying for graduate courses in the Fairleigh Dickinson library, she met her future husband, Thomas, who was there completing his MBA.

Janice was an educated, well read, intelligent woman who could have been a successful career woman but chose instead to remain at home and support her husband's successful business career and raise and support her children, Tommy and Barbs. In later years when asked why she did not pursue a career, she would reply that she had a career raising her children and that she was very successful at it. In later years she loved being a part of her grandchildren's lives and often babysat.

Aside from her family, Janice's other love was the NJ shore. She spent her summers up until marriage at a family summer home in Mandalay at the head of Barnegat Bay. There she passed all of her summers in the sun swimming, boating, & walking to a general store while picking wild blackberries & blueberries along the way. This "old bungalow" was a place of solace & happiness for many years. So much so that Janice and her husband started new memories with their own summer home on Barnegat's Silver Bay just beyond her old family home.

Janice loved traveling to Fort Lauderdale, Florida with her husband & two children every year either during Christmas or Easter. Janice and Thomas traveled extensively with close friends and family to many destinations such as Scotland, England, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, Charleston, New Orleans, Hawaii, Florida, and San Francisco. In later years she and her husband were snowbirds and stayed in Florida in the winter.

In addition to her son (Thomas), daughter-in-law (Mary Jane P. Hood), daughter (Barbara), and son-in-law (Charles W. Benz Jr.), Janice is survived by her five grandchildren (Elizabeth Jane Magwood Hood, Thomas Buchanan Hood III, Meredith Ann Entice Hood, Charles William Benz III and Justin John Benz), her brother (William Stape Dowdy), her sister-in-law (Diane Dowdy) and extended families in New Jersey, Illinois and California. She was predeceased by her sister Phyllis Virginia Dowdy Stout.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, February 17, 2018 from 11 am to 1 pm at Countryside Funeral Home, 724 Route 202 North, Three Bridges, NJ 08887.