Music: Bread, "Everything I Own."

One of the great pleasures of living in Central New Jersey was the abundant beauty along roadsides and in people's yards, hence the nickname of "The Garden State." Joanne and I traveled to Highland Cemetery at least once or twice a year to lay wreaths or flowers on her mother "Mimi's" grave and on Gene's. Then we'd drive a short distance over the Delaware River to New Hope and enjoy a nice lunch and people watching, or, more rarely, dinner there.

The route we'd take from our home in Kendall Park to Highland Cemetery in Hopewell, was Rte 518, which has several names along the way. The only thing consistent was its rural nature and the abundance of flowering things. When I visited the site of Joanne's memorial stone in early May of this year, I decided to chronicle some of that beauty along the way for you and me, and especially for Joanne, who was all about beautiful things. It begins at our old house in Kendall Park, and ends at Highland Cemetery.

So here's a slide show accompanied by a selection of Ave Maria, performed by Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott. I hope that you'll enjoy it.

It makes me so happy when I find more pictures of Joanne, and can set them to a song that seems right for her. Please enjoy

Music: Cat Stevens, "Lilywhite."

Well, that should be apparent by now. I miss Joanne. This song pairs up well with this picture of her, at Jacquelyn's christening, holding our brand new baby and presenting her to the world. Her happiness is manifest, and I think a little surprise at where she found herself in the world, mother to a new life. She had thought that she would never go that route, and wasn't sure that she would ever want to, as an only child herself she had never participated in someone else growing up, as those of us with siblings do. Nevertheless, there she was.

Fortunately for Jacquelyn and me, she was magnificent at it.

Music - David Gilmour, "Wish You Were Here." And NB: This song substitutes for any AC-DC song, because their music was just not going to happen here, in spite of my searching for something suitable.

Thank you so much for the over 6000 views of my wonderful wife's life story, told poorly but enthusiastically here. I wanted to make sure that Joanne would not be forgotten by the world, and your visits here do so much to cheer me that this is the case. I promise to bring pieces of her life to you as I can, and to keep her memory alive as best I can. Again, thank you, you who have come here to remember Joanne Marie Thayer!

It's just beginning Spring here in San Antonio and in Tucson and soon enough in New York and New Jersey, places where Joanne spent nearly all of her life and each of which she loved, often for wildly different reasons.

To celebrate, I've changed the first music in the rotation from the Nutcracker to Vivaldi's "Spring," and the banner to the new Snowdrops theme, illustrating Joanne's love for the renaissance of life and flowering beauty that this season would bring. Our home in New Jersey was a riot of color in this season, with forsythia, daffodils and tulips galore!

Jo could always bring summertime into even the coldest day. I suppose that may explain her predilection for wearing shorts outside when it snowed! Here's some pictures of her circa 1970.

Music by Chad and Jeremy, "A Summer Song."

Music by Paul McCartney.

Around 1970/71, Joanne and her mother and father went to visit her grandparents in Hollywood FL, with a side trip to Monkey Jungle. It was one of her fondest memories of times with her parents.

Music: This is Goodbye for Us by Dan Romer

Just as Joanne was a breathtakingly beautiful woman, she was just as much so as a girl out of school beginning her work career, at Boy Scouts.Thanks to Gene's excellent photographic skills we are blessed with this set of photos, now accompanied by "The Carnival is Over", by The Seekers.

Here's a short video from 1991 of Joanne resting with Sienna, our little cocker spaniel.

Here's a short segment from that Christmas. Holidays back then featured lots of presents and a house that was a disaster. No worries, though, we had fun. Features a cameo by my mom's voice!

I'm excited, I never thought I'd be able to find or post any video of Joanne, because you see, we were young parents during the very early years of VHS cassettes, when videotaping was fairly complicated. We DO have some old videos, but they're mainly of Jacquelyn and not so much of Joanne or me. Still, some short segments exist and here is the first!

That would be the perfect Christmas present you could give to Joanne, and me.

I've added the Arabian Dance from the Nutcracker Suite to Jo's music rotation, for the 2018 Christmas holiday season. It's always been the most exotic selection from this family Christmas favorite and suits Joanne's exotic beauty as well as her love for all things Christmas.

On October 13, 2018 my daughter Kelly, son in law Thomas and I went to the Grand Canyon to scatter some of Joanne's ashes at one of her most beloved places on earth. With the amazing vista surrounding us at Navajo Point, an outlook on the eastern side of the South Rim near "The Watchtower," we found a perfect spot where she could rest with a wonderful view of that beautiful place. In time, a thousand years from now, some of her ashes will make their way to the Colorado River a mile below and flow to the Pacific Ocean. Soft and gentle journey, sweet girl.

Pictured: Dennis, Kelly Wagoner   Not pictured (doing the work): Thomas Wagoner

I don't know if Joanne ever heard this song, but I think she would have liked it. It seems appropriate for this random collection of pictures of her.

Music by Iron and Wine - "Such Great Heights."

"You're a dream to me..."

Music by the Cranberries

It would be nice, wouldn't it?

Music by Jim Croce.

Just some miscellaneous pictures from our life in Tucson, Arizona along with two pictures from our vacation to Mazatlan. Joanne absolutely loved parasailing, it was her most exciting athletic endeavor and it certainly gave her a different perspective on things!

Not many people know that Joanne had some fairly different tastes in music, at least in her younger years. She was a fan of AC-DC, and I would love to incorporate one of their songs into a story, but it's really hard. Until then, I know she'd like this song by Elton John.

Just some more pictures I found, overlaid with this sweet Beatles song, "Here, There and Everywhere." Happy birthday, Jo!

Some more pictures from Tucson, AZ visit in winter of 1985. Also some pictures from Joanne's cousin Bill and his new wife Elvira wedding reception upstate in New York. A pool party at our home in South Brunswick, NJ. Finally, a balloon light up in New Jersey.

Interesting story: Joanne was working at the Village Voice in Greenwich Village when a messenger came in with a package for somebody or other. Come to find out, the messenger was her cousin Bill Frewert! She loved to tell the story (much better than I just did) of how a New Jersey cousin and an upstate NY cousin happened to run into each other in Manhattan.

Music: Enya, Caribbean Blue

One of Joanne's very favorite places in Tucson was the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, kind of a zoo and museum of desert flora and fauna. We often went there, and Joanne really enjoyed teaching Jacquelyn about its wonders, and the hidden beauty of the desert. These pictures were taken in May 1986.

Music: The Association - Everything That Touches You

This series of pictures shows our trip to Cancun, Mexico with side trips to Chichen Itza, Xel-Ha, Tulum and Isla Mujeres. A small ruin we came across on tiny Isla Mujeres (where we used a scooter to see the island and escaped with our lives from my amateurish driving!);The pyramids of Chichen Itza were overwhelming and you can see the effect climbing the big pyramid (and coming back down) had on us. The other sites were equally amazing - Xel Ha's crystal clear water and abundance of colorful tropical fish that we could swim among; Tulum, the Mayan ruin located right on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico.

Some pictures from another trip to Florida to visit Joanne's lovely grandparents and visit Monkey Jungle. Pictures from around home, and a random summer party with many of Joanne's friends and coworkers from the Village Voice. Pictures from Joanne's birthday.

Music: Adam Wiltzie - The Endless Battle of the Maudlin Ballade

Joanne was always special to me and to everyone who ever met her. These are some random pictures that all show her inevitable smile and appreciation for the wonders of life and living.

Music - Marco Beltrami, "A Quiet Life"

This video is kind of a catch all covering a little more than a year. The first picture was the day after our wedding and Joanne is just so incredibly beautiful in this picture. The next couple are on our honeymoon on the French island of Guadeloupe. Then some at a party we had at the house in New Jersey to celebrate our wedding, followed by some pictures during Joanne's pregnancy and finally on Jacquelyn's very first birthday (the one that never gets a number) after probably the worst and best 24 hours of Joanne's life to that point.

I chose "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac as the music because we both adored Stevie Nicks and went to many, many of their concerts, and this is probably her prettiest and sweetest song. At one concert at the Garden States Art Center in New Jersey about the time Jacquelyn was around 5 or 6 I pulled out a pair of binoculars to see the stage better and Joanne and I shared them. The couple behind us asked if they could borrow the binocs. I looked at Jo and she smiled and shrugged.

So I handed them...the Barbie Binoculars that we had borrowed from Jacquelyn, as we had nothing better. We talked about the look on the face of the couple when they tried to use them years afterward and always laughed.

Last New Year's holiday, daughters Jacquelyn Thayer, Kelly Wagoner and I ventured to Tucson, AZ to scatter some of Joanne's ashes at Gates Pass and Tucson Mountain Park with our good friends Karen Intintoli and her sons Nick and Vince. On that occasion Nick also read the eulogy for the benefit of those who couldn't be there and to mark the moment.

Nick did an amazing job, and I think that Joanne was very pleased - I know that I was! Equally wonderful in this effort was my daughter Kelly, who took on the unheralded job of recording the event on extremely sophisticated equipment, ie, my iPhone! I don't think that anyone could do a better job with the most sophisticated devices, she was perfect.

Finally of course the real roadblock was leaving conversion of the video and its posting here to me, which explains why it took 6 months. I think that Joanne understands and forgives me, as she did for 35 years. Anyway, here it is, please enjoy!

Pictured, from left to right: Jacquelyn, Nick, me, Karen and Vince. Not pictured: Kelly

The sharper-eared among you may notice the sound of traffic occasionally. We actually did not conduct this next to the freeway, it was in a fairly isolated area, but the microphone on the iPhone is really, really good! Just another thing that would make Joanne giggle.

I just saw this joke:

AN ELDERLY man was telling his friend about the memory clinic he had attended to cure his absent mindedness. He said: “They taught us all the latest psychological techniques - visualization and association.”

“That sounds marvelous,” said the friend. “What is the name of the clinic?”

The first man goes blank and thinks for a while then suddenly smiles and asks: “What do you call that lovely red flower with thorns on the stem?”

His friend said "You mean a rose."

“That’s it!” he cried, then turned to his wife and said “Rose, what’s the name of that memory clinic?”

I never forgot Joanne's name, but this was virtually every conversation Jo and I had over the last ten years or so - I'd come to tell her something, but she'd have to remember half the details for me along the way! Joey, I miss you remembering where I put stuff, what date we did things, who we went to a party with...

Joanne was so very good at so many things, but working in the magazine field, she had a lifelong desire to leave her mark with a magazine of her, and some of her dearest friends', inspirational creations. Just before her passing she succeeded in establishing that magazine called "A Heart of Grace and Joy."

I am pleased to announce that I was able to collect all 11 issues and republish them on Wordpress, at: https://aheartofgraceandjoy.wordpress.com/

You are invited to read and enjoy them, download them if you like and distribute freely, so long as the masthead remains with the work and proper creation and ownership credit is given to "The Estate of Joanne Marie Thayer," along with a link to this website: https://www.forevermissed.com/joanne-marie-thayer/

Beautiful mother and daughter.

Music: The Consolations of Philosophy by Max Richter

These are in no particular order or time span, they're photos of Jo, many of her with friends and loved ones, that I've come across in the past few weeks. Of course, she's always smiling.

A lifetime passes so quickly. It all really does happen in a moment.

Music: 100 Years by Five for Fighting

In December of 1983, Joanne and I once again visited Arizona, and both her grandparents from her father's side and grandmother from her mother's side, Margaret Bahr, also visited at the same time - Margaret flew in with us from NJ. Of course we came from frigid East Coast weather to bright, warm sunny days in Tucson and our clothing reflected that.

We enjoyed their company and went out to dinner at a nice Tucson restaurant with them, but Joanne and I wanted to visit the Grand Canyon and nearby ruins in the north of the state, so we got into our cold weather gear and drove up to northern Arizona to the South Rim of the Canyon, then on to several spots including Wupatki Ruins. I have included only one Canyon landscape picture and one Wupatki picture so that you could see where I will, with Jacquelyn and Kelly if they want to come, scatter more of Joanne's ashes. The Grand Canyon is such a special place for our family, and Wupatki Ruins is an awesome site, and the drive to it is absolutely amazing. Joanne would wish to be remembered in that part of the world.

Finally, when we returned to NJ we celebrated Christmas, and here is a lovely picture of our grey Persian, Smokey, and a few days later, Joanne holding our adorable runt Puddy at the door. It's a miracle that Puddy survived kittenhood, and she went on to be one of our longest living cats.

I miss them all, of course. I imagine Joanne is cuddling Puddy once again.

Music: Speed of Sound by Coldplay

By all accounts, Joanne was a great boss at the Village Voice, and this shows a few pictures of her serious side there, but she made great efforts to create a fun working environment, which included a few weekend summer parties at our house in South Brunswick, New Jersey.

Much as we went to visit Joanne's parents soon after we got together, we also wanted to do the same with her grandparents on her father's side, Wawee Julia and Popsy Mickey, a delightful couple with traces of their Eastern European heritage in their speech. So in the late winter of 1982-83 Joanne and I flew down to visit them in Hollywood, FL. It didn't hurt that we'd be going from the snow and ice of Central New Jersey to the warmth of Florida, either!

We spent about a week there enjoying Wawee's wonderful cooking, especially her paprika enriched meats and delicious pastries, and soaking up Popsy's humor and wisdom. Most of our days were spent going to the beach and a couple of evenings we went out to dine and dance.

Our favorite city to visit there was Fort Lauderdale. There were a couple of pretty swanky restaurants along the waterfont, and one of the really fun things for us to do was to walk along the piers looking at the incredibly expensive yachts tied up there - the kind with cars and helicopters on top. It was fun to imagine being that wealthy, though of course we never got close, but I think we were happier than many of their owners.

We went to one not so swanky restaurant that had a cave motif, where we were a little early. The hostess assured us that we could wait in "the waiting cave" while they readied our table. For some reason that just cracked us up, and we'd refer to some restaurant's "waiting cave" forever afterward to make the other laugh.

I thought that this song by Jesse Colin Young, Get Together, was a nice one to use for this video, with its memorable and sweet melody and especially because of this line:

"Some may come and some may go
We shall surely pass
When the one that left us here
Returns for us at last
We are but a moment's sunlight
Fading in the grass."

I always was moved by that, even more so since Joanne has passed away.

I promised Joanne that she would never be forgotten, and yes, she will always live in my memory and Jacquelyn's, as well as those of her friends and other relatives. And perhaps this website will live to the end of the internet.

But I have always felt that the existence of a stone memorial is harder to erase from time and might make it until the end of time. So, I am happy to announce that her promised memorial was finished and in place near her mother's grave in Highland Cemetery in Hopewell. New Jersey. It is an amazingly quiet and beautiful place, small and personal.

The stone is called Mountain Rose granite, a shade of pink that reminds me of Joanne's sweet and feminine nature, and softer in tone than the austere gray stones in the rest of the cemetery. When I get back east I'll decorate it for a better picture.

I hope you will visit her there, though it is only her spirit and not her body.

Eulogy for my dear wife Joanne

December 30, 2017

Joanne was a revelation to me. She was beautiful both inside and out, and she radiated that beauty in countless ways. Her love for God was boundless, her love for her family infinite, and her desire to be remembered and not forgotten creates in me an obligation which I intend to fulfill until the day that I join her in that wondrous afterlife we are promised. I can’t say that I’m one of the most religious of people, but Joanne was, and I’ve seen her hand in things that give me faith and will continue to keep my faith strong until my own end here.

Joanne Marie Melnichak Thayer grew up as the only child of parents who had each also been only children. As a result, she was very close to the generations in her family, but I think it also cultivated in her an awareness that it was left to her to carry on for the family, after all her forebears were gone. The number of family photos, and the diaries she left behind were almost overwhelming in number to me, but I understand and will honor her wishes and memory.

Joanne and I met in our early thirties, She soon was my wife, and we both took our marriage very seriously. She had a professional career, and yet gave it up to be there for me at all times, supporting me through good times and bad, being my helpmate through all things, complementing me where I was weak, and in turn leading me where she was strong. She, through her love and strength, made us a family. But we both came to realize that our life together was not enough, that in order to matter we must do more than just exist, and chronicle our existence. And eventually we were blessed with a daughter, Jacquelyn.

She loved our daughter Jacquelyn more than I ever could believe possible. We had not previously considered having children, and until that time, in both of Joanne’s marriages and in her career choices a child seemed unlikely. Over time, though, we came to see that life is meaningless without leaving a mark, and Jacquelyn would come to be that mark for us. Joanne was a completely devoted mother – I have yet to see a photo where she was holding Jacquelyn and not wearing a bright smile of the love and happiness that our daughter brought to her.

Joanne valued her friends, those that she met and those she knew from the internet, and kept close to them through her visits, letters and postings. As I tie up loose ends of her life here I’ve gotten to be more aware of these friends, and how she enabled in them a fierce loyalty due to her giving nature. If you became her friend, you were her friend for life.

Finally, of all the places we lived, Joanne loved Tucson best. The place we were wed, where she met her closest friends, where she was the happiest. Now her spirit is coming back home.

There is so much to say that I could never fit it all in one document or one occasion. Simply let me say, Joanne has come home – to her Father, to her family gone before her, and to the places in the world that she loved and would have made hers had she just a little more time.

Rest in peace, my lovely wife.

To everything there is a season, a time for every
matter under heaven; a time to be born,
and a time to die; a time to plant,
and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away.

-Ecclesiastes

The Twenty-Third Psalm

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the
paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
for thou art with me; Thy rod and
thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence
of mine enemies: thou anointest my head
with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life: and I will
dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Merry Christmas, sweetie. We love and miss you!

Early on in our relationship, Joanne and I visited her father Al and step mother Joy in Tucson, AZ - mainly so that Al could check out this new guy to make sure he was worthy of his daughter. Fortunately, he judged that I was! As a former Marine, Al had high standards to be met.

That same summer we had some folks over to our house in NJ and there are some terrific pictures of Joanne that I included. I used this sweet and gentle Neil Young song because it speaks to a long term love affair. Our was long, but just not long enough.