May, Joanna

Joanna May was born on March 30, 1942, in Evanston, Illinois, and died on August 15, 2022, in St. Louis.  She was the daughter of Robert L. May and Virginia Mary Newton.  Her father, a native of New York City and graduate of Dartmouth College, moved to Chicago to work in catalog advertising with Montgomery Ward & Co. In 1941, he married his secretary, Virginia.  Joanna was the first of their five children, followed by her brother Chris, and by three sisters, Virginia, Martha, and Betsy.  Joanna also had a half-sister, Barbara, who was born to Robert and his first wife Evelyn, who had died in 1939.  In addition to these five siblings, Joanna had a four-legged older brother, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the character created by her father in the children’s story of the same name written for Montgomery Ward in 1939.

Joanna’s mother was a devout Catholic.  Though her father was not a Catholic, he agreed when he married Virginia that their children would be raised as Catholics, and so they were.  They always prayed that their father would become a Catholic so he could one day join them in heaven.  Shortly before his death in 1976, their prayers were answered.  But whether or not he is now in heaven only Joanna knows – and she’s not talking!

Joanna grew up in a very strict household, but unlike some of her siblings, she seldom got into trouble.  Though she was a good girl, she nonetheless figured out ways to assert herself.  Her father, having been born and raised in New York, was an avid Yankees fan.  In response, Joanna decided she would become a zealous Brooklyn Dodgers fan – much to her father’s consternation.  And then there was the day when she and her brother, while rummaging through an old trunk in the basement, came across a large Dartmouth College banner.  Joanna immediately ran upstairs with it and found her father sitting on the couch, whereupon she began marching around with the banner stretched out in front of her, shouting, “Dart Mouth, Dart Mouth!!”  This was probably the closest she ever came to getting into serious trouble.  Joanna was also a founding member of the 4 J’s Club, a secret society of neighborhood girls whose names began with a “J”.  Little is known of the group, for since none of her siblings’ names began with that letter, they were never allowed to join.  While most of her childhood summers were passed in Evanston, during the 1950s, Joanna spent a few of them at Camp Bryn Afon, in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.  In a photo taken many decades later, Joanna can be seen paddling in the bow of a canoe, a big smile on her face, proudly displaying skills she’d picked up as a little kid not far from the Canadian border.

Joanna attended Evanston public schools through the 7^th grade, at which point she told her mom and dad that she wanted to transfer to a Catholic school so she could one day become a nun.  Her parents honored her wishes, and Joanna completed middle school at St. Joan of Arc School.  She then attended Marywood High School in Evanston and four years later graduated from St. Mary of the Woods College in Terre Haute, Indiana.  Joanna at that point joined the Sisters of Providence, a teaching order, and took on the name Sister Joanna Marie.

Her first teaching position was at Marywood High School, her alma mater, in Evanston.  When Marywood closed in 1970, Sister Joanna Marie moved to Missouri where she taught for a number of years at John F. Kennedy High School, a Sisters of Providence school in Manchester just west of St. Louis.  One of the subjects she taught was French, a language she began studying in high school and that she often practiced with her brother as the two of them did the evening dishes together in Evanston.  After several years at Kennedy, Joanna found she could no longer teach in the classroom.  Because the Sisters of Providence is a teaching order, she left the convent, moved into St. Louis, and took up the new life that so many are blessed to have known.  To commemorate her departure from the order, Joanna bought herself a purple Honda Civic whose license plate announced her newly-restored pre-convent name:  “J • May.”

For the remainder of her life, Joanna worked in a wide range of administrative positions, most of them at St. Louis University’s School of Allied Health, with a few years in the middle at Washington University.  Joanna poured her heart and soul into everything that she did.  She was beloved by her fellow workers, and by the students whom she served.  Joanna cared about these others as though they were family.  And in many ways, they were, for she never married and never had children of her own.

Joanna’s early love for baseball remained with her for the rest of her life.  Though she had been a Brooklyn Dodgers fan as a child, this didn’t keep her from going to Chicago White Sox and Cubs games with her father.  Nor did it prevent her from switching her loyalty from the Dodgers to the Cardinals once she moved to St. Louis.  She regularly attended Cardinals games with a wide range of friends, part of a rich social fabric that she wove for herself during her more than 50 years in St. Louis. Joanna was also an occasional world traveler, including an early trip to Paris to practice her French, and a more recent visit to Israel in 2019.

Joanna was a very generous but largely invisible supporter of Assumption (Mattese) Church, and of the greater St. Louis community.  Even before she retired, but especially afterwards, she devoted a significant amount of her time, energy, and resources to assisting others.  This included working with the St. Vincent de Paul Society; helping with church retreats, auctions, social gatherings, and fundraising; aiding needy families with their children’s school tuition; and editing her parish newsletter.  Joanna also served as a one-on-one reading tutor for low-income elementary school children in St. Louis.  To this end, Joanna would visit a local bookstore toward the end of each summer and select materials she thought would be fun for the students whom she’d be tutoring during the upcoming year.

Joanna will be deeply missed by her family and her friends, and by the many people who were blessed to have been the recipients of her love, friendship, and generosity.  May she rest in peace.

Arrangements are as follows:

Visitation: Friday, September 30, 2022, 4-7 p.m., at Kutis Funeral Home, 5255 Lemay Ferry Road, St. Louis, MO. 63129.

Funeral Mass: Saturday, October 1, 2022, 10 a.m., at Assumption (Mattese) Church, 4725 Mattis Road, St. Louis, MO 63128, with internment to immediately follow at the Assumption cemetery.

Please send any condolence cards for Joanna’s family to: Elizabeth Decker, 495 Green Bay Road, Lake Bluff, IL 60044.

In lieu of flowers, please consider making a contribution to one of the following:

St. Louis University David W. Wagner Memorial Scholarship Fund, 1 North Grand, St. Louis, MO 63103.

Assumption (Mattese) Parish Endowment Fund, 4725 Mattis Road, St. Louis, MO  63128.

American Cancer Society, P.O. Box 22478, Oklahoma City, OK 73123.