Jeanne Van Leer Campbell, a longtime seasonal resident of Martha’s Vineyard, died peacefully in Newton on March 19, five months after she learned she had pancreatic cancer.

She was born in Mobile, Ala., on Dec. 4, 1926. Her father, Leon K. Van Leer, founder of Van Leer Chocolate Corporation of Jersey City, N.J., was born in Rotterdam, Holland in 1899 and married Myra Eichberg of Mobile, Ala. They moved from Mobile to New York city in the early 1930s, and then to Glen Ridge, N.J., in 1940. Jeanne graduated from Glen Ridge High School in 1944, and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in English from Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C. in 1948. She worked for several years as a successful copywriter for NW Ayer, later working from home. She and her husband Malcolm Oliver Campbell raised their family in Montclair, Verona and Glen Ridge, N.J. In 2013, they moved to Newton to be closer to their children.

Jeanne first began to love Martha’s Vineyard when she stayed in Chilmark for a weeklong vacation in 1966. She and her husband returned yearly for a few weeks at a time until they bought land and built a small summer home in Spring Point in 1974. Since 1986, they have cherished and participated in Island life for at least five months of every year in their Vineyard Haven home.

During 50 years on the Vineyard, up to and including her last summer on the Island in 2015, Jeanne canoed, swam, walked, gardened, wrote, photographed and found ways to make her mark. She was devoted to the Featherstone Center for the Arts, the Garden Club, Polly Hill Arboretum and Camp Jabberwocky. She had many showings in several local galleries, offered well-researched travel slide shows every summer, contributed to the Vineyard Conservation Society, Tisbury Waterways, Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, the YMCA, Trustees of Reservations and Slip Away Farm on Chappaquiddick, among others.

Jeanne greatly appreciated the care that Dana Farber and then Hospice gave her in her final months. Even as she lost strength and mobility and became confined to her bed, this previously active woman said, “I love my life!”

She was predeceased by her husband of 63 years in December 2014. She is survived by her brother Maurice Theodore Van Leer of Lexington, Va.; sons Bruce and Lee Campbell and their children; her daughter Jan Campbell and her children; and friends and family of every generation from many states and countries.

A service and celebration of her life will be held at the Featherstone Center for the Arts on Martha’s Vineyard on May 14 at 11 a.m. Those planning to attend are asked to RSVP to jan72361@yahoo.com.

She asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to The Dorothy L. Gilbert Fund at Guilford College in her memory.