She was four years old when her mother died of pneumonia, the third of four children and only girl. Her handsome father, a young attorney making his mark in New York, cried through the night, holding his children close in their Tarrytown apartment, the baby only a year old. Their maternal grandmother came to live with them.
When her father was named general counsel for Liberty Mutual Insurance at 10 Rockefeller Plaza, the family moved to an apartment adjacent to Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan, across from Mother Cabrini’s Shrine, to shorten his commute. St. Elizabeth Hospital was at the corner, where years later three of her seven children would be born.
Her father, John Patrick Smith, was born in Buffalo, a single child whose father died when he was a boy. He was a good student, graduating from Canisius College in 1918. He met lively Honora “Norine” McNamara in the “Big Apple” during World War I, where he served as an Army private in chemical warfare. Norine had come from Selby, England to live with cousins working in Vaudeville.
John’s “barrack” was a nicely furnished apartment he shared with two Army buddies in the Theatre District, “loaned to the war effort” by a generous actress. The lass from North Yorkshire lived across the street and fell in love with the lad from Buffalo.
When the “war to end all wars” was over, John attended Fordham Law School, courting Norine until he graduated and they could marry. Kevin was first born, then Don and Joan. Jimmy was the baby.
Joan was 16, helping her grandmother prepare dinner when her grandmother suddenly collapsed, sliding to the floor. She died a day later. With World
War II raging in Europe and the Pacific, and her older brothers in military service, Joan and Jimmy were enrolled in boarding schools.
War II raging in Europe and the Pacific, and her older brothers in military service, Joan and Jimmy were enrolled in boarding schools.
Joan graduated from Ladycliffe on the Hudson, dating boys from West Point Academy nearby, and was attending Good Counsel College in White Plains when she met her future husband in June, 1945 while visiting cousins near Buffalo. She didn’t like the guy one bit. He was home on hospital leave from the Army and eyed her girlfriend as he sipped his beer.
When she visited in July and August, 1946, he was flying every day at an airfield 35 miles east and didn’t ask for a date until summer’s end when she was packing to return to college. Nor did she react kindly to their first real date in 1947, a bumpy flight in a small plane over Niagara Falls. But romance blossomed. They were engaged during her Christmas visit, on her birthday, December 31. And married in Buffalo on July 15, 1948. Unpretentious and private, with a lovely smile and big, beautiful, expressive eyes, Joan has been her husband’s pride and joy, the center of his life.
Joan was devastated by the premature birth and death of their first child on April 3, 1949. He would have been named Michael. A holiday in Mexico failed to lift her spirits. A doctor in Rochester told her she would never conceive again. Her husband always intended to look him up as years passed and their family grew: Kathryn, Nancy, Mary, Susan, Patricia, and John were born between 1951 and 1957. Thomas lived just a half day on February 6, 1960, born with acute respiratory failure. Amy’s arrival on March 30, 1966 was a joyful surprise.
Joan never complained that seven years passed in the 1950s before the family could take an overnight holiday in the Adirondacks. Her husband worked two jobs to make ends meet.
She rejoiced when her father retired from the law in 1961 and studied for the priesthood at Beta College for late vocations in Rome. Ordained in 1965 at age 69, he was chaplain for a retirement community near Buffalo for 17 years. When he visited his daughter and son-in-law, he celebrated mass at their dining room table. Father John died in 1985, the year Joan and her husband visited the small room he’d occupied for four years at Beta College.
Patient and loving, Joan shouldered most of the burden of the terrible teen years while her husband’s work, first with government, then with an international company, kept him away days at a time. He often tells her there’s no way to express his gratitude and appreciation for her strength and wisdom. She’s buoyed family spirits through numerous address changes and adjustments to new schools; through illnesses and keen disappointments, broken hearts and broken bones.
She’s as unassuming today as she was in 1948, now 14 times a grandmother, and 13 times a great grandmother. Her children call daily to chat about their lives, get advice and comfort, and express their love.
Life changed on May 20, 2010 when she suffered a left brain stroke and was airlifted from her home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to a medical center in Baltimore where she remained in intensive care a full week. She returned to the acute rehabilitation center at Memorial Hospital in Easton, just minutes from her home, where she was treated for three weeks before moving on to continuing rehabilitation at William Hill Manor in Easton for another five weeks.
She has made good progress, uses a walker only when she leaves the apartment, but still receives speech and hand therapies in the hope more recovery is possible. Although she sometimes gropes for familiar words and forgets what she has read, she is in remarkably good spirits. Her husband is chef, housekeeper and grocery shopper.
Joan is still a very private person who may not be overjoyed I have written this column. But I wanted to tell her once again, as we approach our 63rd wedding anniversary, how much I love her, admire her, and respect her, and how grateful I am she forgave me that bumpy flight over Niagara Falls in 1947.
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Carlton E. Spitzer
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