How little many of us really knew about Joan because she was not the kind of person who talked about herself. She was a listener who reached out to other people and never complained of ills life had dealt her, not even of the pain she endured in her long-running battle with cancer. Of the recurrence last year, and the need for further chemotherapy, she wrote simply, “I am disappointed.”

I knew Joan as a neighbor child, ten years younger than I. She was a bright and pretty little girl who was always a bit overshadowed by her two active brothers, Charley and Bruce. She went through the Coldwater schools, starting with the red brick rural Centennial School and on to graduate from Michigan State and taught school for awhile. She married Robert Hall in 1958 and over the next eight years bore six children before the marriage failed. She worked at several interim jobs as she went back to gain her Masters degree, following which she returned to teaching.

Joan’s world was never limited to her own neighborhood. With the advent of the Internet, Joan continued to reach out to family and friends throughout the country. Sometimes it was only passing along a joke, but always we could look forward to being remembered. In her years since she was diagnosed with it, she has used the Internet to push for research for cure of breast cancer.

It says a great deal about her that her devoted children gathered around her every day since she made the decision to go into hospice care. She had earned their devotion, just as she has now earned eternal rest.

Her children, Maureen, Robert, Claire, Barry, Sarah and Jon will face a difficult period of adjustment to life without her. We extend to them our sympathies for their loss, and pray with them.

May she rest in peace. May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen