A Page for Joan

MY BRAVE and WONDERFUL JOAN

I have lived with Joan almost every day for almost 40 years. For me it was love at first sight; for her, not so much. But I do grow on people.

Joan was an extraordinary person. She was a fighter all her life, not just the daily struggle with the limitations imposed by her disability, but for numerous progressive causes. She was an active advocate in the civil rights movement in the 60s, in the disability rights movement in the 70s and 80s, in the labor movement thru her union at LaGuardia Community College and in our Park West community for decades against the overreaching of greedy landlords and unscrupulous real estate developers.

At first a bacteriologist at Mt Sinai Hospital, she switched careers in her early thirties and became a respected faculty member and successful professor and career counselor at La Guardia Community College. She loved teaching and helping students to get a start in the working world. Most of her students were disadvantaged and came from countries all over the globe. It amazed me that she could pronounce and memorize the names of the many foreign students in her classes.

But most importantly, she was the best wife a man could ask for and the best friend anyone could hope for. She was both to me. She lived life with grace and dignity and refused to be defined by her disability. Even her friends didn’t know the name of her condition. Joan made the best of her life’s journey. She loved to travel—together we went to France 3 times, to Israel, to Ireland and took over 15 vacations in the Caribbean, to Aruba 10 times, to Barbados, Bonaire, Guadaloupe, St. Martin and Puerto Rico.

Joan appreciated all the arts. She frequented museums, theater, movies, joined a film club and most recently a book club. She enjoyed all kinds of music, from classical, opera, folk, jazz, blues and pop and even tolerated the hard rock I forced on her from time to time.

Joan loved food, fine dining and loved to cook. In our early years together, she was in the kitchen a great deal and unlike me, was not bound to the strictures of recipes. She would start with a recipe but then creatively do her own thing. When I started cooking for us, she was supervising most of the time, always for the better.

Joan hated to stay in place, and, unfortunately, particularly the last few years, life had increasingly become visiting doctors’ offices and staying at home watching too much TV. During this last (and only) hospital stay, she spelled out to me that I was her “rock”, but really it was quite the opposite. It is simply impossible to put into words what she meant to me. She is irreplaceable and I will miss her profoundly.

- Dean Heitner, 9/7/15