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By Carey Reeder | Managing Editor

Nancy Long Benz’s dream of creating a children’s book has come true after the recent release of her picture book “Jane, Found on Jane Lane.” The book is a true story about a therapy dog Jane and her adventures with orphans from Ukraine that local mission Bridges of Faith have been helping for well over a decade.

Benz is the Director of Ministries at Bridges of Faith in Billingsley, just five miles south of Clanton. She grew up in the Gardendale area, and was a school teacher in Jefferson County for 25 years. When she retired, she started volunteering at Bridges of Faith.

“I was the missions coordinator at my church, and I was looking for some kind of ministry for them that was in another country,” Benz said. “Many of them did not want to travel to another country, but I wanted them to have a hands-on experience.”

Benz would bring groups from her church to Bridges of Faith to volunteer with their mission work. She connected with Tom Benz, another staff member at the mission, and the two later married in 2020. After a few key staff members departed, Nancy moved into a full-time volunteer role and moved to Clanton to start her journey.

For 14 years, Bridges of Faith has brought groups of Ukrainian orphans to their camp just south of Clanton for one month stays at a time. While here in the United States, the children get to experience Alabama culture and travel to the beach, visit churches, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville and many other experiences. Benz and the staff traveled back and forth to Ukraine at least three times a year for trips, and on the return trip, brought a handful of children back with them to stay.

Along the way, Tom Benz’s son asked his father to watch a Rhodesian Ridgeback dog named Jane while he was on deployment. Jane came out to the vast land at the Bridges of Faith mission and immediately took to the area getting to run freely in all the open space. Jane quickly became the therapy dog for the mission, and she accompanied the children on all of their adventures across Alabama.

Benz’s teaching career was in early children education, mainly the second grade, and she got to read to children on many occasions. The more she read to the children, the bigger her goal of one day reading her own book to children grew.

“I always wanted to write a picture book,” Benz said. “Every time I would sit and read to the children and see the sparkle in their eyes when I would read to them, I would always think ‘This is something I could do someday.’”

“Jane, Found on Jane Lane” is the first book Benz has written, and it features the great impact the therapy dog has had on the Ukrainian children. Jane being a rescue animal, Benz thought there would be no better topic for a children’s book than her transition from rescue to therapy dog. It is a story about how anyone can change their life from bad to good, and Benz said the writing was easy because it was based on true events that Jane lived.

“Jane’s story highlights the unique, therapeutic roles that animals can play,” Benz said. “By joining Jane, young readers learn about empathy, community and the incredible bond between humans and animals.”

The book begins by talking about rules that Jane needs to follow in order to stay safe in certain scenarios, much like the children that Bridges of Faith help have to do in their native country. Later in the book, it illustrates Jane’s transition to a therapy dog showing all of the experiences the children had with her from the moment she met at the airport in Atlanta, Georgia.

“The children would just hover over her because I guess it is a universal language, the love of animals,” Benz said. “When they come over here they cannot speak English at all, so naturally, they trust Jane the dog first.”

Copies of the book can be ordered at servicedogjane.com, and Benz mails each order personally. Partial proceeds from the sales of the book will go directly to an orphanage in Romania that Bridges of Faith is operating. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian children could not be hosted in other countries. However, an orphanage in a bordering country could keep them safe, which is how the mission is continuing to make a difference.

“Everyone has a purpose, and with that purpose, you should be kind,” Benz said. “The moral of the story is — no matter what your background is, if you can be kind to others the way Jane’s human friends were kind to her and the way she was kind to the orphans, then it can have a positive impact on their lives.”

Benz has held some book signings in the community, and she is planning to hold some more in schools across Chilton County during the upcoming school year.