--Published in The Alaska Dispatch News, 03/12/16:

Long time Seward, Alaska, resident Joan Clemens, 80, passed away peacefully in a care facility in Yuma, Ariz.

Joan was born in Crosby, N.D., to Louis and Gladys Spooner.

She grew up in nearby Noonan, N.D., where she and her high school sweetheart, Dale Clemens, married in 1956.

She received her RN degree in Minot, N.D., and in 1968 she and Dale along with their two young sons, Mike and Mark, moved to Seward, Alaska.

Dale secured a teaching/coaching position at Seward High School while Joan took an RN position at Seward General Hospital. In 1975, Dale and Joan bought The Fish House, a sporting goods store.

Joan, the creative thinking Alaskan woman she was, would air drop care packages to her husband and boys in the Chugach Mountains while on their annual hunting trips.

After Dale's death in 1989, she went back to work at Wesleyan Nursing Home in Seward, where she retired. She always loved and followed sports. She attended all the Seward High School games that her boys, and later grandkids, participated in. Her TV was always tuned to a baseball, basketball or football game.

After retirement, Joan divided her time between Seward and Yuma. She loved to read and could be found checking out five to seven books a week from the library. She played pinochle and bridge with friends and kept up an active life until, tragically in 2013, she suffered a stroke.

She is survived by her sons, Mike Clemens and Mark Clemens and his wife Karla Jo; and her beloved grandchildren, Chris Clemens and his wife Samantha, Logan Clemens, Kiana Jo Clemens, Oceana Clemens and Cody Clemens. Also surviving her are former daughter-in-law, Kristi Larson; her brothers, Glenn Spooner and wife Barbara, and Neal Spooner and wife Cathy; sisters-in-law, Neola Cross and Marietta Clemens; and brother-in-law, Boyd Clemens and his wife Barb; as well as many cherished nieces and nephews.

Later this spring, a flotilla will gather and spread her ashes at Pony Cove, where she loved to salmon fish ... a very fitting place for this lovely Alaskan woman.