Judy, We were honoured to be part of the beautiful tribute you and your amazing kids organized for Joel. You did Joel proud and not just because his adult children spoke so eloquently about his life but because every element of the service reflected and honoured Joel's vibrancy, humour, decency and formidable brain power. A lot of thought, love and preparation went into this moving memorial and we appreciated the opportunity to remember Joel with you. Your friends and neighbours from Brussels brought back memories of how we first met. We are richer for having known Joel these many years.
With love to you and the whole family,
Judy and Paul

One winter, Joel send me to Montreal to cover an economics conference. "Dress appropriately," he told me. The LAT bureau assistant in Montreal met me at my hotel the first evening. He was wearing a wool sports coat and a sweater vest. Having not been outside since I landed around noon, I asked was I overdressed with an overcoat--but no hat or gloves. He said I'd be fine since the bureau was only a couple of blocks away. So we proceeded through the hotel lobby, walked through an tunnel that crossed the street and emerged outside to walk the last few blocks above ground, The wind was gusting at least 20 mph and it was minus 11 degrees , I later learned. A few years later, I told Joel about my Montreal trip as I was heading to Belgium to cover an anti-trust hearing on Microsoft. Joel laughed, and told me I should have listened to him. Then, he graciously let me pick his brain for every tip and piece of advice he was willing to give about Belgium. A great journalist and Renaissance Man, sans pareil. Thank you for this wonderful tribute to Joel. He will be missed.

Roger & I have known Joel & Judy since the early ’70s, when Roger succeeded Joel as the schools reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times (“education reporter” would have been considered too highfalutin for a tabloid). He was smart as a whip with a subtle sense of humor. Despite all he went through with Parkinson’s over the years, I never knew him to complain or show any self-pity. A wonderful family man. And a worthy cribbage opponent. We miss him terribly.

Thank you for such a loving tribute to Joel. I appreciated hearing his voice, which reminded me of our days at the National Journal where we bonded over the need to index the stories. Later, I was fortunate to count Judy as a colleague and friend at The Post. Later still, from evenings when we dined together with Joel and Judy, Sara and Walt, Hugo and I took both strength and insight from their living with Parkinson's.  We will keep him in our hearts.

Thank you Judy for creating such a moving service celebrating Joel's life. It was especially meaningful for Perry and I to hear from you, your family and Joel's colleagues and friends because it gave us window into Joel in his fullness: When he was healthy and vigorous; a successful journalist, a generous mentor, an active and loving father with an always curious mind. Joel's grace, humor and optimism in the face of adversity is something we knew first hand.  Although the service was not the right time to focus on you Judy,  I want to add that your steadfast dedication to caring for Joel during his long struggle as well as your abundant generosity and good humor  enabled him to live at home and stay connected with his friends and family until the very end of his life.

This is the first "Celebration of Life" I've witnessed that lived up to its name -- usually it's a euphemism for funeral. You made Joel alive again and commemorated his vitality even in illness. (I can feel Judy editing my copy here.) We journalists are a tribe and I'm happy to be a member...and Judy, I did not know your children are so beautiful! A special hello to Dr. Terry who tended to my son when she was at Children's Hospital 30 years ago.

The tribute yesterday was beautiful. The families tributes and the many friends was so moving. I will never forget Joel’s enormous courage and grace. I greatly enjoyed his book as well. I also enjoyed the photos and the film of Joel at work and traveling.

I became Joel’s friend in his last years. Although his limitations frustrated him at times, his curiosity and fierce determination to enjoy life were evident in the little things—a joke, a piece of candy, an intellectual puzzle, Judy appearing suddenly at his side, an essay by Bob Samuelson, pride in the accomplishments of his children. His good humor and tenacity were inspiring.

Thank you all for organizing the wonderful memorial service. The stories I was going to add were not necessary, but will share them now. Like Alice Porter, I benefited from working as a more junior editor to Joel in my early days in Washington at National Journal. (I gotta go back and look for all those redundancies Alice mentioned in the last thing I wrote!)

Teresa spoke sweetly about Joel's relative naivete about parenting at that time--before he had three children of his own. My last day at NJ was the day I delivered my son. As my contractions started at the end of that workday--my actual due date--I realized my watch did not have a sweep second hand to time them. (This was back before smart phones, of course.) So I walked over to Joel's desk and asked if his watch could time seconds. He manfully ripped it off his wrist and handed it to me. I thought to myself, "Joel is being SO cool. He knows what's happening, but he's not making a big deal of it." He had not yet been part of a delivery--and later admitted that he had had no clue what was going on or why I wanted his watch.

Joel was "the Commissioner," who managed NJ's coed softball team and, as noted by others, would run a pool on anything he could dream up--including the details of my baby's expected arrival. My husband won the pool, and Joel's report of the results holds a framed place on the walls of my son's house.

Around 1978, National Journal won a National Magazine Award for a big package on the flow of federal funds to the states, and an analysis of the "winners" and "losers." While those of us who had had some small part in preparing the issue got to go to New York and experience the excitement when we won the award, it was really Joel's knowledge of the budget and his analytical abilities that were responsible for the magazine winning the award. It was really ground-breaking work, and later adopted by the Commerce Department, and, of course, something that has become an issue in recent political campaigns.

We were privileged to be invited to the signing of Joel's book, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. That connection became even more important to us when my husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease three years later. Joel did so much to help persons with PD and their caregivers understand the nature of PD, and to face the challenges with grace and courage. (I have recommended his book to so many people after they receive a diagnosis.) Both he and Judy were an inspiration to so many of us.

About six or seven years ago, I asked Joel if he had ever thought of updating his book, and volunteered to help him if that would make a difference. He said that JHUP would have liked to reissue it, but that he knew he no longer was capable of the kind of focus it would have taken. The understanding of the disease and its treatments have evolved since Joel published his book in 2002, but the emotions that go with it have not. The love and devotion that Joel expressed in his book are something that will remain and that all of us, particularly his family members, can continue to treasure.

In the first years I knew Joel, he was a pretty good golfer. My father-in-law had played golf on a collegiate team, and when he came to visit, we sometimes recruited Joel and a couple of other golfing friends to come play with us. In a display of both his ethics and his mathematical brain, Joel quietly shared later that my father-in-law had been shaving strokes.

When Joel was still trying to do everything he could after he had had his Deep Brain Surgery, he came down with Will and one of Will's friends to play golf at a course my husband had a hand in developing. He could no longer play the way he once had, but he still made the most of his time with his family and friends.

After Joel died, I pulled out his book again. I laughed when I reread the inscription he had written because it was so typical of his sense of humor. "Sara and Walt," he wrote. "No wonder I'm a lousy putter."

He left us all with a smile on our faces, as your gathering did as well.

Today's memorial service was a wonderful tribute to Joel as a husband and father, editor and friend.
 He could always make your story better, asking the right questions to clarify the copy.
 March Madness basketball was always more exciting when Joel organized the bracketology for the LA Times office to make our bets.
  His determination to keep working was heroic as he struggled to fight Parkinson's. He took the great risk of having experimental brain surgery. And it gave him years more to love his family and enjoy his work. He was a mensch.

The memorial showed vividly Joel's affection for his family, the breadth and depth of his intellect, and his courage in the face of adversity difficult for most of us to imagine. Thank you.

Nick and Susan Fels

I missed so much of Joel, having met him briefly in Chicago, and then not again until his Parkinson’s was advanced. It was wonderful to learn so much more at this beautiful service, and to get a deeper look at the marvelous person who shared my friend Judy’s life. May we all be enriched by these memories.

A beautiful memorial. Thank you, Judy, for including me on Zoom.
So good to have known Joel—on the Harvard Crimson, on the Metro coming home from work, at family gatherings with Linda, on visits as his Parkinson’s progressed.
So good to remember his perceptiveness and gentle humor now.
My best to you and your family.

What a wonderful man. I feel very lucky to have met Joel and Judy through my daughter's friendship with their children Margret and Will. 

As many have remarked, he was reticent about himself and his many accomplishments, even about his illness, except through his moving account of it in his book. 

I will neverv forget his unbridled curiosity .. a big plus in a journalist... about everything and everyone, including what our life had been like living in Pakistan and Tanzania. 

Joel's soulful eyes and wry smile would take in not only what you said but what you left unsaid.

Judy, Margaret, Will, Anne, Theresa. Thank you for sharing these memories of a wonderful remarkable man

A very telling service aptly celebrating a gifted and caring human being who had a deep capacity for humor. But what is most enduring is his constant courage in a quite difficult circumstance. Also enjoyed his gambling proclivity and benefitted once when I won one of his Monday Night football pools by corrected guessing whether there were more fumbles lost than field goals made. I suspect only Joel could come up with such a question. And the service reminded me once again what a terrific presence and person Judy is.

What an amazing service. Thanks to all of you for the beautiful words. Joel was, indeed, a terrific editor.  He made everything I wrote better. Also, because I suffered from lifelong math anxiety, he was a steady and reassuring presence during the occasional terror-filled moments when I was tasked with writing about the CPI. More importantly, we were a mutual Parkinson's support system for one another, since my older brother, like Joel, had been diagnosed in his 40s and also lived with it for 30 years.  I seated the two of them at the same table at my daughter's bat mitzvah and I know that even in that one brief evening, they were able to share experiences and support. They both told me how much the encounter had meant to each of them. Joel sustained all of us in the LA Times Wash bureau in so many ways - professionally, personally - even nutritionally. How could i have survived without that constant stash of Oreos he kept in his bottom desk drawer?!! He probably stayed so skinny because I ate most of them! May his memory be a blessing.

As part of the loyal National Journal group, my memories of Joel are numerous--as an editor of course but also for his quick wit. Never to be forgotten was the time one of the reporters had a gig in Las Vegas and Joel's horror that she didn't even bet. (She didn't know you had to pull the handle down on a slot machine.) More recently when we moved to Cathedral Avenue Bob and I would see Joel and a caregiver going for walks and would stop to chat. We walk the same streets and miss seeing him.

I owe so much to Joel. It was Joel who called me up one day and asked if I would be interested in applying for a job in the Washington Bureau of the LA Times. For several years, Joel was my colleague and friend on the desk, and then he became my editor.

As others have said, he was a brilliant editor who improved everything he touched. What impressed me most, however, was his personal integrity, his unwavering commitment to the truth (accurately reported and well told), and his love for life. He worked so hard to keep working, and then, because he loved his family and his life so much, he took the courageous step of being one of the first people to have that experimental surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.

I was honored to work with him, and even more honored to know him. 

Judy,
Ben, who is now fifteen, asked what I was doing today, and I told him that I was attending Joel's memorial service. He remembered something--and he is certain that it is a true memory from when he was quite small. I don't recall this at all, but Ben insists that you and Joel let him walk on stilts up and down your hallway when we visited. After hearing what Joel was like as a Dad, I guess that the memory just might be accurate. What a good man and utterly amazing parent he was. Anna

Not to make too much of it, but Joel Havemann probably had more influence over my adult life than any other person. He was responsible for getting me hired to two reporting jobs, the first, at National Journal, after I had walked the streets of Washington jobless for a month. He was my editor in both of those jobs for eight years, and under him I got not just a master course in writing — I owe my own obsession with grammar to Joel — but a daily reminder that it ain’t about influence and prestige; it’s about the person with the paper in his or her hands. I’m grateful to Joel not just for his tutelage, but for his friendship, and that of his amazing wife.

We first met Judy and Joel in the mid-90’s through a common friend we had both known in Brussels. In recent years we’ve become especially close to Judy, and have been amazed at the way someone with so many broad interests could still devote herself to caring for her beloved spouse.
As most everyone has said, Joel’s kindness was particularly notable, even to those who hardly knew him. Every year we invited the Havemanns to an annual holiday party; other guests would ask after him and wonder if they would see him next year. Truly, he was a special person.

Joel "hired" me as an intern at the National Journal. I was a third year student studying journalism and political science at GWU. I remember writing and researching the most incredible stories under his tutelage! Political action committees, the Job Training Partnership Act. With his encouragement, I managed to get an interview at the White House to interview former president Reagan's domestic policy advisor, all as an intern! It was an exciting time. But most of all, I remember Joel's kindness and his compassion, also his acuity in helping me develop better stories. He was a one of a kind editor and individual and I will always remember him with great fondness.

In September 2019, I was a recent college grad moving to DC for my first job in journalism. Through the help of a mutual friend, I found a place to live with the Havemanns, who offered me a room in their beautiful home -within walking distance from the newsroom- to stay in while I was seeking a more permanent housing solution. Joel and Judy were the best first "roommates" to have out of college. They treated me as if I were part of their family, and I always loved hearing about how their paths connected and their careers in journalism. Although it was hard for him to speak, you could still witness his intelligence, his strength, and love for his family. I'm grateful to have lived with the Havemanns and send all my love.

It has been a privilege to watch this service. Joel was one of the wise old men of the Harvard Crimson, a senior when I joined the staff as a freshman in 1965 and one of the tiny handful of women who had the nerve to "comp." Unlike perhaps 90% of his peers, he displayed then the kindness that so many people have remarked on and that provided inspiration to so many throughout his consequential life. Thank you, Judy and family, for bringing these memories to life and for permitting us to share them. 

A beautiful man. Thank you for this wonderful celebration. Love to the entire family.

Ever kind, thoughtful and good-humored, Joel was an extraordinary editor and wordsmith. He remained remarkably determined and courageous in the face of Parkinson’s toll. He was so committed that I can recall the late night on deadline when Joel was shaking so badly that he handed me his keyboard to type his words that elevated my copy. It was an honor to call him a colleague and friend.

Thank you to the whole family for the memorial today. Many good stories, and memories. I was in high school with Joel (and was in two of the photos from his high school days). Lost track of him when we went off to college, but saw his byline in the Sun-Times when I was at UChicago, phoned him, apologized for bothering him but asked if he had gone to Glen Rock HS. He recognized me right away, and was delighted to reconnect. Saw him annually for probably 30 years when a conference took me to DC. He and Judy were always willing to welcome me for evening meal, even after their late days at the papers. They also welcomed us in Brussels, where our son and their three younger children got on well together. As many have said, Joel was a good man.

Joel was a superb editor, a fine reporter, and a caring and generous friend. We'll all remember him for his integrity, good judgment, courage, and fine sense of humor.

Joel’s great gentleness and kindness, his sharp intelligence, his courage in the face of a cruel disease, his skills and tact as an editor have all been recalled by others. I experienced all those qualities as an editor on the Los Angeles Times’ foreign desk, working almost daily with Joel in the Washington bureau. But I gained an even sharper measure of the man when he took the assignment as an economics correspondent in Brussels; it was a role that posed the almost superhuman challenge of making economics and the EU engaging to the average reader. Not only did he meet and exceed that challenge, but he submitted to editing with characteristic grace and patience. It is my professional certainty that the reporters who least need editing are always those who receive it most graciously and gratefully. Joël was such a reporter, such a man. If I and my colleagues on the desk ever managed to rile him, he never let it show; perhaps only Judy knew. This was all the more impressive in an editor of his great skill. It was an honor and a life lesson for me to have known Joël, for however relatively brief a time.

Joel and Judy provided a home away from home, a second family, for me and so many others. Their grace, perseverance and resilience in the face of his Parkinson's was and continues to be inspiring. Sending lots of love and support to Judy and family, and know this world is a better place because of Joel.

Joel,

Your home was like a second home to me, especially when we shared celebratory events like thanksgiving events and Christmas. I’m so grateful for all the memories I have of you, particularly during our soccer days when you would run down the sideline with such enthusiasm! You will be deeply missed.

This morning I went running up past Duke Chapel. Right as I approached the bell tower, the bells started ringing...a tune that sounded a lot like the Marine Corps hymn. I couldn't help but think my Dad was sending a salute to Joel's family on this special day. I'm so grateful to have reconnected these two old friends and know they are laughing it up together in the afterlife.

Having known Joel mainly through his book, "Shaken," I cannot claim to have been a close friend. But I do admire the book, which I found to be a well crafted blend of personal narrative and good science writing. If you haven't read it, I recommend the volume.

I guess I also knew Joel through his choice of wife. I was a colleague of Judy's for many years at The Post. A superb editor and a wonderful person.

Grateful for this beautiful and thoughtful man, not just for his beautiful writing and impeccable example of what it means and looks like to be a good human being - but especially for his amazing, strong, well-spoken, thoughtful children, many of whom, especially Anne, who have graced my life with joy, support, intellectual companionship, and political camaraderie. Grateful, too, to learn more of his profound life today.

So much love to the whole family.

Joel - Your love and enthusiasm for your children led to your being a big presence at WIS. Wherever one looked - there you were, helping out and signaling to Anne, Margaret and Will that who and where they were mattered to you and Judy. You raised three wonderful kids, and I can't think of a better legacy. You will not be forgotten.

Joel and I first met in the hothouse atmosphere of Harvard. We roomed together in our senior year when we were both concentrating on our possible professional careers, he in journalism and I in mathematics. Serious illness and death seemed impossibly far away, and professional accomplishment was a major focus.

Yes, Joel became a successful journalist, but now I most cherish my memories of a highly decent human being, who loved family and maintained a sense of
humor throughout everything.

Full-hearted condolences to all the Havemanns, and blessings to Joel and his life, his legacy.

You will always be in our heart.
Thank you for all you did - you were the heart and soul of WIS's soccer team that brought our boys together that formed lasting bonds. This would not have been possible without your dedication.

I met Joel when we first arrived as freshman roommates at college in 1961. Joel, Mike Brenner, Tom Schoener, and I formed a group which stayed together for all 4 years. His brilliance and character were already evident. He was smart enough to switch from math to a career in journalism. His talents in this field were already on display in his work on the Crimson. I have many fond memories of our time together.

Joel named family as his religion. The love, devotion, and passion he felt for each and all of them and they for him was radiantly evident. We saw it in too many of his activities to name, including Joel’s countless supportive ones at the children’s Washington International School. Margaret — with the support of Judy, the ultimate support, love, devotion of all, and also that of her siblings — focused her 9th and 10th grades’ studies and work on support of research for Parkinson’s. Her resulting presentation and contributions engaged the entire school community, already indebted to Joel and Judy’s generous donations of time and leadership. This was only one of the passionate, caring, deserved tributes of the loving, energetic, and accomplished family to their beloved and loving, energetic and accomplished Joel. 

Joel, we hardly knew you...
We’d only just met...
But, it’s easy to see,
You’ve left a good and lasting legacy.

Brilliant. Kind. Generous. Brave. Tough. Thoughtful. Compassionate. Enthusiastic. Curious. Funny. Modest. You just run out of words. A great man and wonderful colleague.

Joel,
You may be gone from our sight, but you are never gone from our heart. 
We met Judy and Joel through Will who is one of the best friends of our son Behdad. Throughout these years that we had known Joel, to say that he was the nicest man on the earth is an understatement. He was a decent, thoughtful, considerate, kind and extraordinary human being. We are honored to have him and his family as our friends. Thank you Judy, Anne, will, Margaret, and Theresa for having a very beautiful celebration of life for him, and make us part of it. We are so proud of his legacy, his wonderful children. We love you all forever.

Vargha & Hossein Besharatian

To Judy’s Guy

I could not get to your eyes
at the startle of entering your space

coming back I almost did but
it took a third time to see

the brave gush bathed
in the might have been

that lights this moment
and a memory