Jane B. Carstensen | Volunteer, 83

Jane B. Van Pelt Carstensen, 83, a community volunteer formerly of Wynnewood, died of strokes Tuesday at Beaumont, a retirement community in Bryn Mawr.

Mrs. Carstensen grew up in Wayne, attended Agnes Irwin School in Bryn Mawr, and graduated from Oldfields School in Glencoe, Md. In 1946, she married Alexander B. Toland.

The youngest of their four children was only 11 when Mr. Toland died in 1966. The next year, Mrs. Carstensen married Hans L. Carstensen, a widower with three children.

Mrs. Carstensen volunteered at the Schuylkill Valley Nature Center, teaching ecology to third graders, and taught English as a second language to Cambodian and Laotian refugees.

She was active with the Garden Weeders and the Agnes Irwin Alumnae Association. She served on fund-raising committees for the Philadelphia Orchestra and was a former chairwoman of the Women's Committee of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

For almost 60 years, she summered with her family in Middletown, R.I. As a child, she had learned to sail in Maine, her daughter Julie Toland said, and later sailed in Rhode Island, on the Chesapeake Bay, and in the Bahamas. She called herself a "water girl," her daughter said. She was also an accomplished golfer and skier.

In addition to her husband and daughter, Mrs. Carstensen is survived by a son, Sling Toland; daughters Mariana Toland-Hankow and Robin Krieger; stepchildren Judson Greene, Hans Carstensen and Carolie Howard; two brothers; a sister; 10 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

A funeral will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, 230 Pennswood Rd., Bryn Mawr.