This is not a standard obituary. It is a love letter.

My dear Joan,

I want people to know your kindness, your wonderful sense of humor, how you could make people smile with a mischievous twinkle in your eyes. People were drawn to you because you saw them, reached out to them as an equal, a fellow human being who deserved attention and respect and the benefit of the doubt until shown otherwise.

At your retirement party (after 38 years in the Philadelphia Regional Office of the National Park Service, going from a GS-3 clerk typist right out of St. Maria Goretti High School to a GS-15 Comptroller for the Northeast Region) you were proudest of the remarks by the Black women who said your door was always open, who acknowledged and appreciated your mentoring and your daily distribution of short bios of little known Black heroes (like Charles Drew) during Black History Month, who loved that you loved those collard greens.

You were so damned smart! I think you knew that but felt diminished because you didn’t have the imprimatur, the college degree.

People should know that you loved to garden, that you created beautiful English flower gardens back east but would not reproduce them here because they demanded too much precious water. That you liked to fish: whether surf fishing off Hatteras Island, fly fishing the San Juan River or just dropping a line in Gunnison Lake. That you were a “card shark.” That you were a bird photographer and made backyard bird calendars and a little book on the quail family that lived in our front courtyard one year. That you raised $1000 for the Vista Grande Public Library using those photos on a quilt which was raffled off. That you were ever loyal to the Philadelphia Eagles and the Phillies.That you were a “class act.” That you were a sharp dresser, loved colorful sneakers (you were known as the Imelda Marcos of sneakers). That you were a terrific internet shopper, an intrepid researcher.

So this is not the usual obituary. You were not the usual person but special: “delicate, unique, awesome.” Those of us who are left miss you terribly. You will remain forever in our hearts.

Forever loving you,

Joan Concetta Biordi, with whom you lived and loved for more than 47 years and were finally able to marry.

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