Joanna "Joanne" Field was the only daughter of John Levi Field (1899-1963) and his wife Eunice Virginia Stearns (1906-1983), both native North Carolinians, of rather distinguished Southern lineages. Both their families can be traced back to early colonial settlers in Virginia, North and South Carolina, some of whom helped shape history. There were English, Scots, Irish, Scots-Irish, Welsh, French Huguenot, German and some Dutch lines. John and Eunice had gone out to St. Louis, Missouri on their marriage in 1929. Johnny, as he was called, was an engineer, who designed roads and bridges for various state highway departments, and had accepted a position in St. Louis.
Joanne, was born, amidst much pomp and circumstance. She was born prematurely, in the midst of a heat wave, when the temperature had reached 114 degrees, and 67 people died that day of heat stroke. (Joanne used to say that every time her mother told the story, it got worse!) She was a very sickly child, born with a heart condition, and she suffered from malaria when she was less than a year old. The doctors didn't think she would live.... but she triumphed over frail health and adversity, as she did all her life. She was originally named Joanna, in honor of her father John, but somehow the name got turned into Joanne, and, as a cousin said, "She's been Joanne all her life."
I doubt many children have ever been as much loved. An older cousin used to speak of the time when Joanne was born. She said "You'd think nobody ever had a baby before. Her parents made a royal progress across the South showing her off, and you'd have thought the crown prince of India had come to earth." They were so very proud of their beautiful daughter.
During her early childhood, her parents moved to various towns in South Georgia, and then back to NC, where John Field worked on various highway projects. They moved every six months or so, going on to the next project. Among other places, they lived in McRae, Blakely & Colquitt, Georgia, Dothan, Alabama, Edenton, Fayetteville, Warsaw, Mt. Holly, Mt. Airy, & Forest City, NC, and came to Marion, NC in 1941. When John was due to be transferred somewhere else, he decided he liked Marion too much to leave it, and started his own engineering and land surveying company there.
Joanne was a precocious child who learned to read and write before going to school, and learned to play the piano when she was barely old enough to reach the keys. When she was very small, some of her cousins came to live with them because their mother had died....and other cousins spent the summers. Uncles and aunts came to stay. Joanne was an only child, but her home was always filled with visiting relatives, many of whom became as close as siblings to her. Her mother believed very strongly in the importance of family ties, and also in the tenets of Southern hospitality.
Joanne grew up in Marion, in an old fashioned small Southern town. She used to laugh about "the Garden Street Gang," a group of children who lived on Garden Street, who had wonderful adventures....and also got into all sorts of mischief. Her version was that the boys let her tag along after them....but a while back, I got the real story from a charter member of the Garden Street Gang.... According to him, Joanne was the ring leader, and thought up all the adventures....and the mischief...and it was the others who tagged along.
Joanne loved the beach, and she and her parents often went on vacations and fishing trips, to the coast of SC and Florida, and locally at Lake James, near Marion. They particularly loved the Shoreline Inn at Myrtle Beach, SC, where the family spent part of each summer through three generations. Johnny built a summer cabin for the family on Buck Creek near Lake Tahoma, near Marion, and built a lake, called "Lake Jo Jo," that he named for his daughter, which he stocked with fish. They ice skated on it in the winter when it froze over.
Joanne inherited her musical abilities from her maternal grandfather, Dulin Benson Stearns (1863-1962), who was very talented musically. From her parents, she inherited a keen intellect and intelligence, a love of learning and reading, and a rare talent for conversation and funny stories. And from all her ancestors, she inherited a deep and abiding Christian faith. She joined the Presbyterian Church in Marion at a young age, but served as church organist for St. John's Episcopal Church for many years as she was growing up. She spent several summers at the Transylvania Music Camp at Brevard, NC, where she learned to play the harp.
When the Field family moved to Marion, their lives became inextricably linked to two other families that remain to this day dearest friends. The Fields became "closer than family" friends with Dr. Lewis William Hagna (1910-1984) and his wife Evelyn "Lyn" Mentzer (1911-2006), and with Dr. George Catlett Rowe (1913-1981) and his first wife Dr. Mary Virginia Copeland (1915-1955). After Gincy's death, George married Fay Evelyn Featherson, who became like an older sister to Joanne, a dearest friend.... who survives her. Another powerful influence on all our lives has been Ruth Lee Twitty (Mrs. James Young), who came to work as cook/housekeeper for the Field family in the early 1950s, and remains a dear, much loved friend to this day.
Joanne skipped two grades in school. She went to college when she was 15, and was graduated before she was 20. She first attended Queens College in Charlotte, where she was a member of the Phi Mu Sorority (as her mother had been before her). She then transferred to Salem College, where she was graduated with a double major in Music and English. She had contemplated a career as a concert pianist, and had received offers of scholarships from Juilliard, Smith and Oberlin, but determined that the monotony of practicing for eight hours every day was too much. She decided to study English, with an idea of teaching....if necessary. She took graduate courses at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
On graduating from college, Joanne worked for a time as a social worker, with the juvenile court in Marion. She wanted to help children, and she did help many... but she was too tender hearted to survive long in that career. She told me once that seeing the suffering of so many children, she got to the point where she cried all the time, and couldn't stop... so she had to leave that to others. She became a teacher.
In the late 1950s, Joanne decided she wanted to live at the beach. She was offered teaching positions both at Savannah, Georgia and Virginia Beach, Virginia, and picked Virginia. There she met the love of her life, Kenneth O. Pankow, a young Navy officer from Minnesota. At a party one night, they met when they sat down across each other at a bridge table and made a "Grand Slam." Ken used to say from that moment on, he knew he wanted to marry her, but it took a while to persuade her.
Joanne Field and Kenneth O. Pankow were married in Marion, NC, on 23 June 1962. They were married at the First Presbyterian Church in Marion, with both Dr. Carl McMurray (Presbyterian) and Rev. John Q. Beckwith (Episcopalian) officiating. Ken Pankow left the Navy on their marriage, and went to work for an engineering firm in Asheville, where they lived at first. They went back to Marion for a while when John Field was sick, and came back to Asheville again in 1964 or 1965.
Joanne lost her beloved father to cancer on 24 June 1963, the day after her 1 year wedding anniversary. She told me that she never could have survived his loss if it hadn't been that she was expecting a child, a son, born in Marion on 23 Sept. 1963, whom she named for her father....my grandfather that I never knew... though I certainly always felt that I knew him. Mama used to tell me so many stories about the other John Field... and many of the qualities of his that she praised were things that exemplified her own life. She used to say that he was sitting on a riverbank in Heaven, fishing.... She is with him now.
Joanne and Ken came back to Asheville about a year after her father died. They encountered another strong influence in their lives, Rosa May Hudson (1920-1991, Mrs. James Hampton), who came to work as housekeeper for them when they lived on Kenilworth Road, and remained a part of their family until her death.
Joanne was very active in the Ladies' Hospital Auxiliary of Memorial Mission, serving as president for several years. During her tenure there, the "Pink Ladies" as the volunteers were called, raised a great deal of money to build and equip a pediatric intensive care unit for the hospital. It was dedicated to the memory of Dr. William McGuffin, a much loved local pediatrician. Joanne was also involved with the Asheville Symphony Guild.
Joanne and Ken joined the First Presbyterian Church when they moved to Asheville. The church organist was a professor of music up at Cullowhee, who only made the trip to Asheville once a week, so Joanne played for all of the weddings and funerals at the church for several years, including a large number of "walk in" weddings. She and Dr. A. Allen Gardiner, a dear, dear friend and long time minister at First Presbyterian, could tell stories that would have you rolling on the floor laughing about some of the rather eccentric weddings in which they'd participated.
An old college friend of Joanne's, Gwenda Ewell (Mrs. John Ledbetter), started a youth choir at First Presbyterian Church, and Joanne helped her with it, playing the organ and piano for the performances. The group traveled about the South presenting their musicals at various churches in the early 1970s.
Joanne's husband, Ken Pankow, started his own engineering and land surveying firm in 1970. In the early years of his company, she was the book keeper, and helped draw maps, skills she'd learned from helping her father in his business, and she sometimes even went out on surveys. Pankow Engineering Co. exists today thanks to her early efforts.
When Joanne's son, John, went to school, Joanne went with him. She signed up to substitute at the Gibbon's Hall School, and later taught full time at the Asheville Country Day School. She taught 4th & 5th grades, then pre-first, and later developed a music program at Country Day. In 1978, she went to substitute at T. C. Roberson High School, and before the year was out, had been offered a permanent position. She continued at Roberson until she took early retirement in the early 1990s. She was very active in extra curricular activities at the school, sponsoring several clubs and helping with the Drama programs. Charles Koontz, long time principal of TCR, recalled that she wrote the school fight song. And, for every occasion, retirements, weddings, babies' births, etc., she was always ready to compose a poem for the occasion. Her poems were always funny, and always filled with love. And her students often spoke of her caring, her humor and her ability not only to teach, but to instill a sense of self respect in her students.
The early 1980s were a time of loss and sadness. Joanne's dearly loved aunt, Faye Stearns (Mrs. Clyde) Fesperman, died on 3 March 1980, and a dear, beloved friend, Dr. George Catlett Rowe died on 3 Jan. 1981. Joanne's dear mother, Eunice Virginia Stearns (Mrs. John) Field, died 1 June 1983.
In the later 1980s, Joanne discovered a new enthusiasm in life. She decided she wanted to be in a play. She began her acting career by being cast as one of two leads, "Aunt Abby," in "Arsenic and Old Lace," at the Hendersonville Little Theatre, and continued to perform at H. L. T., Asheville Community Theatre, Belfry Players and Asheville Repertory Theatre, as well as appearing in productions of "Murder A La Carte," a company based in New York that presented murder mystery entertainments at hotels and resorts. Among her favorite roles were those of "Aunt Abby" in "Arsenic," "Miss Prism" in "The Importance of Being Earnest," and "Madame Arcati" in "Blythe Spirit," all at H. L. T.; "Eliza Gant" (Thomas Wolfe's mother) in "Look Homeward, Angel" and "Amanda" in "The Glass Menagerie," at A. C. T.; and "Carrie Watts" in "The Trip to Bountiful," at the Belfry Players. She and her son John enjoyed appearing in plays together.
One night, after a play, a lady came back stage and said she was an agent and would like to try to get some professional work for Joanne. Her reaction was predictably funny and humble: "You mean someone would actually pay me to do something I love so much?" The next thing we knew, she had a recurring role on the television series "In the Heat of the Night," where Carroll O'Connor helped launch her career as a professional actress.
Joanne took early retirement from teaching in order to pursue a career as a professional actress in the early 1990s. She appeared in more than 60 productions... films, television series, tv movies, commercials, etc. She traveled as far as New York and New Orleans, but most of her film work was done in Atlanta and Wilmington, NC. She appeared in "Two Soldiers", which won an Academy Award in 2004, and was in three films that were in competition at the Sundance film festival in 2005. A partial list of some of her films, as well as photographs of her in some of them, can be found on the Internet Movie Database at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0659600/
Joanne began having some health problems in 2005, but one production company wanted her so badly for a commercial they were doing that they came and filmed it at her house.
A Hollywood casting director told her son, "I always tell people about your mother -- she's such a wonderful inspiration." That she was. She used to say, "I am so blessed to have found this late in life."
And, even more than the acting itself, I think she loved the fascinating people she met. She never met a stranger. She loved people and they loved her. I think that is what gave her such a brilliant talent as an actor, the ability to love and understand characters, as she loved and understood people.
The lights may have dimmed here, and the final curtain call has passed, but on another stage, I believe the curtain is opening on a new Adventure -- and, doubtless, there is applause.
In the funeral sermon, preached by Father William J. Martin of All Saints' Anglican Church, which Joanne and her family had attended in later years, Father Martin said:
"...We thank God for a life well lived. We thank God for a dedicated wife and mother. We thank God for a caring and loving teacher. We thank God for a woman of many talents, who blessed us with her many gifts. We praise and thank God for the time that she had with us.
"We are a people of hope. we believe that we are only passing through this world, on our way to the next. And what is significant to remember is that we have been blessed by the Permanent Things which filled the heart of Joanne Pankow and were extended to so many people. The Permanent Things come from Our Lord and Saviour. The Permanent Things are those pieces of sanctity, love, care, good will, help, beauty and truth which have flowed through Joanne to all of us.
"The Permanent Things are those gifts of God, which she embraced and passed on to us. We are all just passing through. Joanne was just passing through. But as she moved through this dimension, she passed on to us what she had received from God. And what she received from God and passed on touched lives, brought goodness, charity, and incredible talent to a world that is bent of never receiving anything like that. She passed on to us what God had given to her. And what God had given to her, gave hope to those who did not have it, love to those in pain, faith to those in despair. We are blessed for Joanne who was just passing through, but not before she passed on to us the gifts of God.." (21 Nov. 2009)
In her school yearbook, the inscription under Joanne's picture was the quote that begins, "She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies..." Joanne walked in beauty all her life, offering love and joy to each life she touched. Everyone who knew her loved her and will miss her greatly, but should take comfort in the thought that she is "Past all pain and tears, past all cares and griefs…over in the Summer Land".
Joanne, was born, amidst much pomp and circumstance. She was born prematurely, in the midst of a heat wave, when the temperature had reached 114 degrees, and 67 people died that day of heat stroke. (Joanne used to say that every time her mother told the story, it got worse!) She was a very sickly child, born with a heart condition, and she suffered from malaria when she was less than a year old. The doctors didn't think she would live.... but she triumphed over frail health and adversity, as she did all her life. She was originally named Joanna, in honor of her father John, but somehow the name got turned into Joanne, and, as a cousin said, "She's been Joanne all her life."
I doubt many children have ever been as much loved. An older cousin used to speak of the time when Joanne was born. She said "You'd think nobody ever had a baby before. Her parents made a royal progress across the South showing her off, and you'd have thought the crown prince of India had come to earth." They were so very proud of their beautiful daughter.
During her early childhood, her parents moved to various towns in South Georgia, and then back to NC, where John Field worked on various highway projects. They moved every six months or so, going on to the next project. Among other places, they lived in McRae, Blakely & Colquitt, Georgia, Dothan, Alabama, Edenton, Fayetteville, Warsaw, Mt. Holly, Mt. Airy, & Forest City, NC, and came to Marion, NC in 1941. When John was due to be transferred somewhere else, he decided he liked Marion too much to leave it, and started his own engineering and land surveying company there.
Joanne was a precocious child who learned to read and write before going to school, and learned to play the piano when she was barely old enough to reach the keys. When she was very small, some of her cousins came to live with them because their mother had died....and other cousins spent the summers. Uncles and aunts came to stay. Joanne was an only child, but her home was always filled with visiting relatives, many of whom became as close as siblings to her. Her mother believed very strongly in the importance of family ties, and also in the tenets of Southern hospitality.
Joanne grew up in Marion, in an old fashioned small Southern town. She used to laugh about "the Garden Street Gang," a group of children who lived on Garden Street, who had wonderful adventures....and also got into all sorts of mischief. Her version was that the boys let her tag along after them....but a while back, I got the real story from a charter member of the Garden Street Gang.... According to him, Joanne was the ring leader, and thought up all the adventures....and the mischief...and it was the others who tagged along.
Joanne loved the beach, and she and her parents often went on vacations and fishing trips, to the coast of SC and Florida, and locally at Lake James, near Marion. They particularly loved the Shoreline Inn at Myrtle Beach, SC, where the family spent part of each summer through three generations. Johnny built a summer cabin for the family on Buck Creek near Lake Tahoma, near Marion, and built a lake, called "Lake Jo Jo," that he named for his daughter, which he stocked with fish. They ice skated on it in the winter when it froze over.
Joanne inherited her musical abilities from her maternal grandfather, Dulin Benson Stearns (1863-1962), who was very talented musically. From her parents, she inherited a keen intellect and intelligence, a love of learning and reading, and a rare talent for conversation and funny stories. And from all her ancestors, she inherited a deep and abiding Christian faith. She joined the Presbyterian Church in Marion at a young age, but served as church organist for St. John's Episcopal Church for many years as she was growing up. She spent several summers at the Transylvania Music Camp at Brevard, NC, where she learned to play the harp.
When the Field family moved to Marion, their lives became inextricably linked to two other families that remain to this day dearest friends. The Fields became "closer than family" friends with Dr. Lewis William Hagna (1910-1984) and his wife Evelyn "Lyn" Mentzer (1911-2006), and with Dr. George Catlett Rowe (1913-1981) and his first wife Dr. Mary Virginia Copeland (1915-1955). After Gincy's death, George married Fay Evelyn Featherson, who became like an older sister to Joanne, a dearest friend.... who survives her. Another powerful influence on all our lives has been Ruth Lee Twitty (Mrs. James Young), who came to work as cook/housekeeper for the Field family in the early 1950s, and remains a dear, much loved friend to this day.
Joanne skipped two grades in school. She went to college when she was 15, and was graduated before she was 20. She first attended Queens College in Charlotte, where she was a member of the Phi Mu Sorority (as her mother had been before her). She then transferred to Salem College, where she was graduated with a double major in Music and English. She had contemplated a career as a concert pianist, and had received offers of scholarships from Juilliard, Smith and Oberlin, but determined that the monotony of practicing for eight hours every day was too much. She decided to study English, with an idea of teaching....if necessary. She took graduate courses at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
On graduating from college, Joanne worked for a time as a social worker, with the juvenile court in Marion. She wanted to help children, and she did help many... but she was too tender hearted to survive long in that career. She told me once that seeing the suffering of so many children, she got to the point where she cried all the time, and couldn't stop... so she had to leave that to others. She became a teacher.
In the late 1950s, Joanne decided she wanted to live at the beach. She was offered teaching positions both at Savannah, Georgia and Virginia Beach, Virginia, and picked Virginia. There she met the love of her life, Kenneth O. Pankow, a young Navy officer from Minnesota. At a party one night, they met when they sat down across each other at a bridge table and made a "Grand Slam." Ken used to say from that moment on, he knew he wanted to marry her, but it took a while to persuade her.
Joanne Field and Kenneth O. Pankow were married in Marion, NC, on 23 June 1962. They were married at the First Presbyterian Church in Marion, with both Dr. Carl McMurray (Presbyterian) and Rev. John Q. Beckwith (Episcopalian) officiating. Ken Pankow left the Navy on their marriage, and went to work for an engineering firm in Asheville, where they lived at first. They went back to Marion for a while when John Field was sick, and came back to Asheville again in 1964 or 1965.
Joanne lost her beloved father to cancer on 24 June 1963, the day after her 1 year wedding anniversary. She told me that she never could have survived his loss if it hadn't been that she was expecting a child, a son, born in Marion on 23 Sept. 1963, whom she named for her father....my grandfather that I never knew... though I certainly always felt that I knew him. Mama used to tell me so many stories about the other John Field... and many of the qualities of his that she praised were things that exemplified her own life. She used to say that he was sitting on a riverbank in Heaven, fishing.... She is with him now.
Joanne and Ken came back to Asheville about a year after her father died. They encountered another strong influence in their lives, Rosa May Hudson (1920-1991, Mrs. James Hampton), who came to work as housekeeper for them when they lived on Kenilworth Road, and remained a part of their family until her death.
Joanne was very active in the Ladies' Hospital Auxiliary of Memorial Mission, serving as president for several years. During her tenure there, the "Pink Ladies" as the volunteers were called, raised a great deal of money to build and equip a pediatric intensive care unit for the hospital. It was dedicated to the memory of Dr. William McGuffin, a much loved local pediatrician. Joanne was also involved with the Asheville Symphony Guild.
Joanne and Ken joined the First Presbyterian Church when they moved to Asheville. The church organist was a professor of music up at Cullowhee, who only made the trip to Asheville once a week, so Joanne played for all of the weddings and funerals at the church for several years, including a large number of "walk in" weddings. She and Dr. A. Allen Gardiner, a dear, dear friend and long time minister at First Presbyterian, could tell stories that would have you rolling on the floor laughing about some of the rather eccentric weddings in which they'd participated.
An old college friend of Joanne's, Gwenda Ewell (Mrs. John Ledbetter), started a youth choir at First Presbyterian Church, and Joanne helped her with it, playing the organ and piano for the performances. The group traveled about the South presenting their musicals at various churches in the early 1970s.
Joanne's husband, Ken Pankow, started his own engineering and land surveying firm in 1970. In the early years of his company, she was the book keeper, and helped draw maps, skills she'd learned from helping her father in his business, and she sometimes even went out on surveys. Pankow Engineering Co. exists today thanks to her early efforts.
When Joanne's son, John, went to school, Joanne went with him. She signed up to substitute at the Gibbon's Hall School, and later taught full time at the Asheville Country Day School. She taught 4th & 5th grades, then pre-first, and later developed a music program at Country Day. In 1978, she went to substitute at T. C. Roberson High School, and before the year was out, had been offered a permanent position. She continued at Roberson until she took early retirement in the early 1990s. She was very active in extra curricular activities at the school, sponsoring several clubs and helping with the Drama programs. Charles Koontz, long time principal of TCR, recalled that she wrote the school fight song. And, for every occasion, retirements, weddings, babies' births, etc., she was always ready to compose a poem for the occasion. Her poems were always funny, and always filled with love. And her students often spoke of her caring, her humor and her ability not only to teach, but to instill a sense of self respect in her students.
The early 1980s were a time of loss and sadness. Joanne's dearly loved aunt, Faye Stearns (Mrs. Clyde) Fesperman, died on 3 March 1980, and a dear, beloved friend, Dr. George Catlett Rowe died on 3 Jan. 1981. Joanne's dear mother, Eunice Virginia Stearns (Mrs. John) Field, died 1 June 1983.
In the later 1980s, Joanne discovered a new enthusiasm in life. She decided she wanted to be in a play. She began her acting career by being cast as one of two leads, "Aunt Abby," in "Arsenic and Old Lace," at the Hendersonville Little Theatre, and continued to perform at H. L. T., Asheville Community Theatre, Belfry Players and Asheville Repertory Theatre, as well as appearing in productions of "Murder A La Carte," a company based in New York that presented murder mystery entertainments at hotels and resorts. Among her favorite roles were those of "Aunt Abby" in "Arsenic," "Miss Prism" in "The Importance of Being Earnest," and "Madame Arcati" in "Blythe Spirit," all at H. L. T.; "Eliza Gant" (Thomas Wolfe's mother) in "Look Homeward, Angel" and "Amanda" in "The Glass Menagerie," at A. C. T.; and "Carrie Watts" in "The Trip to Bountiful," at the Belfry Players. She and her son John enjoyed appearing in plays together.
One night, after a play, a lady came back stage and said she was an agent and would like to try to get some professional work for Joanne. Her reaction was predictably funny and humble: "You mean someone would actually pay me to do something I love so much?" The next thing we knew, she had a recurring role on the television series "In the Heat of the Night," where Carroll O'Connor helped launch her career as a professional actress.
Joanne took early retirement from teaching in order to pursue a career as a professional actress in the early 1990s. She appeared in more than 60 productions... films, television series, tv movies, commercials, etc. She traveled as far as New York and New Orleans, but most of her film work was done in Atlanta and Wilmington, NC. She appeared in "Two Soldiers", which won an Academy Award in 2004, and was in three films that were in competition at the Sundance film festival in 2005. A partial list of some of her films, as well as photographs of her in some of them, can be found on the Internet Movie Database at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0659600/
Joanne began having some health problems in 2005, but one production company wanted her so badly for a commercial they were doing that they came and filmed it at her house.
A Hollywood casting director told her son, "I always tell people about your mother -- she's such a wonderful inspiration." That she was. She used to say, "I am so blessed to have found this late in life."
And, even more than the acting itself, I think she loved the fascinating people she met. She never met a stranger. She loved people and they loved her. I think that is what gave her such a brilliant talent as an actor, the ability to love and understand characters, as she loved and understood people.
The lights may have dimmed here, and the final curtain call has passed, but on another stage, I believe the curtain is opening on a new Adventure -- and, doubtless, there is applause.
In the funeral sermon, preached by Father William J. Martin of All Saints' Anglican Church, which Joanne and her family had attended in later years, Father Martin said:
"...We thank God for a life well lived. We thank God for a dedicated wife and mother. We thank God for a caring and loving teacher. We thank God for a woman of many talents, who blessed us with her many gifts. We praise and thank God for the time that she had with us.
"We are a people of hope. we believe that we are only passing through this world, on our way to the next. And what is significant to remember is that we have been blessed by the Permanent Things which filled the heart of Joanne Pankow and were extended to so many people. The Permanent Things come from Our Lord and Saviour. The Permanent Things are those pieces of sanctity, love, care, good will, help, beauty and truth which have flowed through Joanne to all of us.
"The Permanent Things are those gifts of God, which she embraced and passed on to us. We are all just passing through. Joanne was just passing through. But as she moved through this dimension, she passed on to us what she had received from God. And what she received from God and passed on touched lives, brought goodness, charity, and incredible talent to a world that is bent of never receiving anything like that. She passed on to us what God had given to her. And what God had given to her, gave hope to those who did not have it, love to those in pain, faith to those in despair. We are blessed for Joanne who was just passing through, but not before she passed on to us the gifts of God.." (21 Nov. 2009)
In her school yearbook, the inscription under Joanne's picture was the quote that begins, "She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies..." Joanne walked in beauty all her life, offering love and joy to each life she touched. Everyone who knew her loved her and will miss her greatly, but should take comfort in the thought that she is "Past all pain and tears, past all cares and griefs…over in the Summer Land".
Joanna "Joanne" Field was the only daughter of John Levi Field (1899-1963) and his wife Eunice Virginia Stearns (1906-1983), both native North Carolinians, of rather distinguished Southern lineages. Both their families can be traced back to early colonial settlers in Virginia, North and South Carolina, some of whom helped shape history. There were English, Scots, Irish, Scots-Irish, Welsh, French Huguenot, German and some Dutch lines. John and Eunice had gone out to St. Louis, Missouri on their marriage in 1929. Johnny, as he was called, was an engineer, who designed roads and bridges for various state highway departments, and had accepted a position in St. Louis.
Joanne, was born, amidst much pomp and circumstance. She was born prematurely, in the midst of a heat wave, when the temperature had reached 114 degrees, and 67 people died that day of heat stroke. (Joanne used to say that every time her mother told the story, it got worse!) She was a very sickly child, born with a heart condition, and she suffered from malaria when she was less than a year old. The doctors didn't think she would live.... but she triumphed over frail health and adversity, as she did all her life. She was originally named Joanna, in honor of her father John, but somehow the name got turned into Joanne, and, as a cousin said, "She's been Joanne all her life."
I doubt many children have ever been as much loved. An older cousin used to speak of the time when Joanne was born. She said "You'd think nobody ever had a baby before. Her parents made a royal progress across the South showing her off, and you'd have thought the crown prince of India had come to earth." They were so very proud of their beautiful daughter.
During her early childhood, her parents moved to various towns in South Georgia, and then back to NC, where John Field worked on various highway projects. They moved every six months or so, going on to the next project. Among other places, they lived in McRae, Blakely & Colquitt, Georgia, Dothan, Alabama, Edenton, Fayetteville, Warsaw, Mt. Holly, Mt. Airy, & Forest City, NC, and came to Marion, NC in 1941. When John was due to be transferred somewhere else, he decided he liked Marion too much to leave it, and started his own engineering and land surveying company there.
Joanne was a precocious child who learned to read and write before going to school, and learned to play the piano when she was barely old enough to reach the keys. When she was very small, some of her cousins came to live with them because their mother had died....and other cousins spent the summers. Uncles and aunts came to stay. Joanne was an only child, but her home was always filled with visiting relatives, many of whom became as close as siblings to her. Her mother believed very strongly in the importance of family ties, and also in the tenets of Southern hospitality.
Joanne grew up in Marion, in an old fashioned small Southern town. She used to laugh about "the Garden Street Gang," a group of children who lived on Garden Street, who had wonderful adventures....and also got into all sorts of mischief. Her version was that the boys let her tag along after them....but a while back, I got the real story from a charter member of the Garden Street Gang.... According to him, Joanne was the ring leader, and thought up all the adventures....and the mischief...and it was the others who tagged along.
Joanne loved the beach, and she and her parents often went on vacations and fishing trips, to the coast of SC and Florida, and locally at Lake James, near Marion. They particularly loved the Shoreline Inn at Myrtle Beach, SC, where the family spent part of each summer through three generations. Johnny built a summer cabin for the family on Buck Creek near Lake Tahoma, near Marion, and built a lake, called "Lake Jo Jo," that he named for his daughter, which he stocked with fish. They ice skated on it in the winter when it froze over.
Joanne inherited her musical abilities from her maternal grandfather, Dulin Benson Stearns (1863-1962), who was very talented musically. From her parents, she inherited a keen intellect and intelligence, a love of learning and reading, and a rare talent for conversation and funny stories. And from all her ancestors, she inherited a deep and abiding Christian faith. She joined the Presbyterian Church in Marion at a young age, but served as church organist for St. John's Episcopal Church for many years as she was growing up. She spent several summers at the Transylvania Music Camp at Brevard, NC, where she learned to play the harp.
When the Field family moved to Marion, their lives became inextricably linked to two other families that remain to this day dearest friends. The Fields became "closer than family" friends with Dr. Lewis William Hagna (1910-1984) and his wife Evelyn "Lyn" Mentzer (1911-2006), and with Dr. George Catlett Rowe (1913-1981) and his first wife Dr. Mary Virginia Copeland (1915-1955). After Gincy's death, George married Fay Evelyn Featherson, who became like an older sister to Joanne, a dearest friend.... who survives her. Another powerful influence on all our lives has been Ruth Lee Twitty (Mrs. James Young), who came to work as cook/housekeeper for the Field family in the early 1950s, and remains a dear, much loved friend to this day.
Joanne skipped two grades in school. She went to college when she was 15, and was graduated before she was 20. She first attended Queens College in Charlotte, where she was a member of the Phi Mu Sorority (as her mother had been before her). She then transferred to Salem College, where she was graduated with a double major in Music and English. She had contemplated a career as a concert pianist, and had received offers of scholarships from Juilliard, Smith and Oberlin, but determined that the monotony of practicing for eight hours every day was too much. She decided to study English, with an idea of teaching....if necessary. She took graduate courses at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
On graduating from college, Joanne worked for a time as a social worker, with the juvenile court in Marion. She wanted to help children, and she did help many... but she was too tender hearted to survive long in that career. She told me once that seeing the suffering of so many children, she got to the point where she cried all the time, and couldn't stop... so she had to leave that to others. She became a teacher.
In the late 1950s, Joanne decided she wanted to live at the beach. She was offered teaching positions both at Savannah, Georgia and Virginia Beach, Virginia, and picked Virginia. There she met the love of her life, Kenneth O. Pankow, a young Navy officer from Minnesota. At a party one night, they met when they sat down across each other at a bridge table and made a "Grand Slam." Ken used to say from that moment on, he knew he wanted to marry her, but it took a while to persuade her.
Joanne Field and Kenneth O. Pankow were married in Marion, NC, on 23 June 1962. They were married at the First Presbyterian Church in Marion, with both Dr. Carl McMurray (Presbyterian) and Rev. John Q. Beckwith (Episcopalian) officiating. Ken Pankow left the Navy on their marriage, and went to work for an engineering firm in Asheville, where they lived at first. They went back to Marion for a while when John Field was sick, and came back to Asheville again in 1964 or 1965.
Joanne lost her beloved father to cancer on 24 June 1963, the day after her 1 year wedding anniversary. She told me that she never could have survived his loss if it hadn't been that she was expecting a child, a son, born in Marion on 23 Sept. 1963, whom she named for her father....my grandfather that I never knew... though I certainly always felt that I knew him. Mama used to tell me so many stories about the other John Field... and many of the qualities of his that she praised were things that exemplified her own life. She used to say that he was sitting on a riverbank in Heaven, fishing.... She is with him now.
Joanne and Ken came back to Asheville about a year after her father died. They encountered another strong influence in their lives, Rosa May Hudson (1920-1991, Mrs. James Hampton), who came to work as housekeeper for them when they lived on Kenilworth Road, and remained a part of their family until her death.
Joanne was very active in the Ladies' Hospital Auxiliary of Memorial Mission, serving as president for several years. During her tenure there, the "Pink Ladies" as the volunteers were called, raised a great deal of money to build and equip a pediatric intensive care unit for the hospital. It was dedicated to the memory of Dr. William McGuffin, a much loved local pediatrician. Joanne was also involved with the Asheville Symphony Guild.
Joanne and Ken joined the First Presbyterian Church when they moved to Asheville. The church organist was a professor of music up at Cullowhee, who only made the trip to Asheville once a week, so Joanne played for all of the weddings and funerals at the church for several years, including a large number of "walk in" weddings. She and Dr. A. Allen Gardiner, a dear, dear friend and long time minister at First Presbyterian, could tell stories that would have you rolling on the floor laughing about some of the rather eccentric weddings in which they'd participated.
An old college friend of Joanne's, Gwenda Ewell (Mrs. John Ledbetter), started a youth choir at First Presbyterian Church, and Joanne helped her with it, playing the organ and piano for the performances. The group traveled about the South presenting their musicals at various churches in the early 1970s.
Joanne's husband, Ken Pankow, started his own engineering and land surveying firm in 1970. In the early years of his company, she was the book keeper, and helped draw maps, skills she'd learned from helping her father in his business, and she sometimes even went out on surveys. Pankow Engineering Co. exists today thanks to her early efforts.
When Joanne's son, John, went to school, Joanne went with him. She signed up to substitute at the Gibbon's Hall School, and later taught full time at the Asheville Country Day School. She taught 4th & 5th grades, then pre-first, and later developed a music program at Country Day. In 1978, she went to substitute at T. C. Roberson High School, and before the year was out, had been offered a permanent position. She continued at Roberson until she took early retirement in the early 1990s. She was very active in extra curricular activities at the school, sponsoring several clubs and helping with the Drama programs. Charles Koontz, long time principal of TCR, recalled that she wrote the school fight song. And, for every occasion, retirements, weddings, babies' births, etc., she was always ready to compose a poem for the occasion. Her poems were always funny, and always filled with love. And her students often spoke of her caring, her humor and her ability not only to teach, but to instill a sense of self respect in her students.
The early 1980s were a time of loss and sadness. Joanne's dearly loved aunt, Faye Stearns (Mrs. Clyde) Fesperman, died on 3 March 1980, and a dear, beloved friend, Dr. George Catlett Rowe died on 3 Jan. 1981. Joanne's dear mother, Eunice Virginia Stearns (Mrs. John) Field, died 1 June 1983.
In the later 1980s, Joanne discovered a new enthusiasm in life. She decided she wanted to be in a play. She began her acting career by being cast as one of two leads, "Aunt Abby," in "Arsenic and Old Lace," at the Hendersonville Little Theatre, and continued to perform at H. L. T., Asheville Community Theatre, Belfry Players and Asheville Repertory Theatre, as well as appearing in productions of "Murder A La Carte," a company based in New York that presented murder mystery entertainments at hotels and resorts. Among her favorite roles were those of "Aunt Abby" in "Arsenic," "Miss Prism" in "The Importance of Being Earnest," and "Madame Arcati" in "Blythe Spirit," all at H. L. T.; "Eliza Gant" (Thomas Wolfe's mother) in "Look Homeward, Angel" and "Amanda" in "The Glass Menagerie," at A. C. T.; and "Carrie Watts" in "The Trip to Bountiful," at the Belfry Players. She and her son John enjoyed appearing in plays together.
One night, after a play, a lady came back stage and said she was an agent and would like to try to get some professional work for Joanne. Her reaction was predictably funny and humble: "You mean someone would actually pay me to do something I love so much?" The next thing we knew, she had a recurring role on the television series "In the Heat of the Night," where Carroll O'Connor helped launch her career as a professional actress.
Joanne took early retirement from teaching in order to pursue a career as a professional actress in the early 1990s. She appeared in more than 60 productions... films, television series, tv movies, commercials, etc. She traveled as far as New York and New Orleans, but most of her film work was done in Atlanta and Wilmington, NC. She appeared in "Two Soldiers", which won an Academy Award in 2004, and was in three films that were in competition at the Sundance film festival in 2005. A partial list of some of her films, as well as photographs of her in some of them, can be found on the Internet Movie Database at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0659600/
Joanne began having some health problems in 2005, but one production company wanted her so badly for a commercial they were doing that they came and filmed it at her house.
A Hollywood casting director told her son, "I always tell people about your mother -- she's such a wonderful inspiration." That she was. She used to say, "I am so blessed to have found this late in life."
And, even more than the acting itself, I think she loved the fascinating people she met. She never met a stranger. She loved people and they loved her. I think that is what gave her such a brilliant talent as an actor, the ability to love and understand characters, as she loved and understood people.
The lights may have dimmed here, and the final curtain call has passed, but on another stage, I believe the curtain is opening on a new Adventure -- and, doubtless, there is applause.
In the funeral sermon, preached by Father William J. Martin of All Saints' Anglican Church, which Joanne and her family had attended in later years, Father Martin said:
"...We thank God for a life well lived. We thank God for a dedicated wife and mother. We thank God for a caring and loving teacher. We thank God for a woman of many talents, who blessed us with her many gifts. We praise and thank God for the time that she had with us.
"We are a people of hope. we believe that we are only passing through this world, on our way to the next. And what is significant to remember is that we have been blessed by the Permanent Things which filled the heart of Joanne Pankow and were extended to so many people. The Permanent Things come from Our Lord and Saviour. The Permanent Things are those pieces of sanctity, love, care, good will, help, beauty and truth which have flowed through Joanne to all of us.
"The Permanent Things are those gifts of God, which she embraced and passed on to us. We are all just passing through. Joanne was just passing through. But as she moved through this dimension, she passed on to us what she had received from God. And what she received from God and passed on touched lives, brought goodness, charity, and incredible talent to a world that is bent of never receiving anything like that. She passed on to us what God had given to her. And what God had given to her, gave hope to those who did not have it, love to those in pain, faith to those in despair. We are blessed for Joanne who was just passing through, but not before she passed on to us the gifts of God.." (21 Nov. 2009)
In her school yearbook, the inscription under Joanne's picture was the quote that begins, "She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies..." Joanne walked in beauty all her life, offering love and joy to each life she touched. Everyone who knew her loved her and will miss her greatly, but should take comfort in the thought that she is "Past all pain and tears, past all cares and griefs…over in the Summer Land".
Joanne, was born, amidst much pomp and circumstance. She was born prematurely, in the midst of a heat wave, when the temperature had reached 114 degrees, and 67 people died that day of heat stroke. (Joanne used to say that every time her mother told the story, it got worse!) She was a very sickly child, born with a heart condition, and she suffered from malaria when she was less than a year old. The doctors didn't think she would live.... but she triumphed over frail health and adversity, as she did all her life. She was originally named Joanna, in honor of her father John, but somehow the name got turned into Joanne, and, as a cousin said, "She's been Joanne all her life."
I doubt many children have ever been as much loved. An older cousin used to speak of the time when Joanne was born. She said "You'd think nobody ever had a baby before. Her parents made a royal progress across the South showing her off, and you'd have thought the crown prince of India had come to earth." They were so very proud of their beautiful daughter.
During her early childhood, her parents moved to various towns in South Georgia, and then back to NC, where John Field worked on various highway projects. They moved every six months or so, going on to the next project. Among other places, they lived in McRae, Blakely & Colquitt, Georgia, Dothan, Alabama, Edenton, Fayetteville, Warsaw, Mt. Holly, Mt. Airy, & Forest City, NC, and came to Marion, NC in 1941. When John was due to be transferred somewhere else, he decided he liked Marion too much to leave it, and started his own engineering and land surveying company there.
Joanne was a precocious child who learned to read and write before going to school, and learned to play the piano when she was barely old enough to reach the keys. When she was very small, some of her cousins came to live with them because their mother had died....and other cousins spent the summers. Uncles and aunts came to stay. Joanne was an only child, but her home was always filled with visiting relatives, many of whom became as close as siblings to her. Her mother believed very strongly in the importance of family ties, and also in the tenets of Southern hospitality.
Joanne grew up in Marion, in an old fashioned small Southern town. She used to laugh about "the Garden Street Gang," a group of children who lived on Garden Street, who had wonderful adventures....and also got into all sorts of mischief. Her version was that the boys let her tag along after them....but a while back, I got the real story from a charter member of the Garden Street Gang.... According to him, Joanne was the ring leader, and thought up all the adventures....and the mischief...and it was the others who tagged along.
Joanne loved the beach, and she and her parents often went on vacations and fishing trips, to the coast of SC and Florida, and locally at Lake James, near Marion. They particularly loved the Shoreline Inn at Myrtle Beach, SC, where the family spent part of each summer through three generations. Johnny built a summer cabin for the family on Buck Creek near Lake Tahoma, near Marion, and built a lake, called "Lake Jo Jo," that he named for his daughter, which he stocked with fish. They ice skated on it in the winter when it froze over.
Joanne inherited her musical abilities from her maternal grandfather, Dulin Benson Stearns (1863-1962), who was very talented musically. From her parents, she inherited a keen intellect and intelligence, a love of learning and reading, and a rare talent for conversation and funny stories. And from all her ancestors, she inherited a deep and abiding Christian faith. She joined the Presbyterian Church in Marion at a young age, but served as church organist for St. John's Episcopal Church for many years as she was growing up. She spent several summers at the Transylvania Music Camp at Brevard, NC, where she learned to play the harp.
When the Field family moved to Marion, their lives became inextricably linked to two other families that remain to this day dearest friends. The Fields became "closer than family" friends with Dr. Lewis William Hagna (1910-1984) and his wife Evelyn "Lyn" Mentzer (1911-2006), and with Dr. George Catlett Rowe (1913-1981) and his first wife Dr. Mary Virginia Copeland (1915-1955). After Gincy's death, George married Fay Evelyn Featherson, who became like an older sister to Joanne, a dearest friend.... who survives her. Another powerful influence on all our lives has been Ruth Lee Twitty (Mrs. James Young), who came to work as cook/housekeeper for the Field family in the early 1950s, and remains a dear, much loved friend to this day.
Joanne skipped two grades in school. She went to college when she was 15, and was graduated before she was 20. She first attended Queens College in Charlotte, where she was a member of the Phi Mu Sorority (as her mother had been before her). She then transferred to Salem College, where she was graduated with a double major in Music and English. She had contemplated a career as a concert pianist, and had received offers of scholarships from Juilliard, Smith and Oberlin, but determined that the monotony of practicing for eight hours every day was too much. She decided to study English, with an idea of teaching....if necessary. She took graduate courses at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
On graduating from college, Joanne worked for a time as a social worker, with the juvenile court in Marion. She wanted to help children, and she did help many... but she was too tender hearted to survive long in that career. She told me once that seeing the suffering of so many children, she got to the point where she cried all the time, and couldn't stop... so she had to leave that to others. She became a teacher.
In the late 1950s, Joanne decided she wanted to live at the beach. She was offered teaching positions both at Savannah, Georgia and Virginia Beach, Virginia, and picked Virginia. There she met the love of her life, Kenneth O. Pankow, a young Navy officer from Minnesota. At a party one night, they met when they sat down across each other at a bridge table and made a "Grand Slam." Ken used to say from that moment on, he knew he wanted to marry her, but it took a while to persuade her.
Joanne Field and Kenneth O. Pankow were married in Marion, NC, on 23 June 1962. They were married at the First Presbyterian Church in Marion, with both Dr. Carl McMurray (Presbyterian) and Rev. John Q. Beckwith (Episcopalian) officiating. Ken Pankow left the Navy on their marriage, and went to work for an engineering firm in Asheville, where they lived at first. They went back to Marion for a while when John Field was sick, and came back to Asheville again in 1964 or 1965.
Joanne lost her beloved father to cancer on 24 June 1963, the day after her 1 year wedding anniversary. She told me that she never could have survived his loss if it hadn't been that she was expecting a child, a son, born in Marion on 23 Sept. 1963, whom she named for her father....my grandfather that I never knew... though I certainly always felt that I knew him. Mama used to tell me so many stories about the other John Field... and many of the qualities of his that she praised were things that exemplified her own life. She used to say that he was sitting on a riverbank in Heaven, fishing.... She is with him now.
Joanne and Ken came back to Asheville about a year after her father died. They encountered another strong influence in their lives, Rosa May Hudson (1920-1991, Mrs. James Hampton), who came to work as housekeeper for them when they lived on Kenilworth Road, and remained a part of their family until her death.
Joanne was very active in the Ladies' Hospital Auxiliary of Memorial Mission, serving as president for several years. During her tenure there, the "Pink Ladies" as the volunteers were called, raised a great deal of money to build and equip a pediatric intensive care unit for the hospital. It was dedicated to the memory of Dr. William McGuffin, a much loved local pediatrician. Joanne was also involved with the Asheville Symphony Guild.
Joanne and Ken joined the First Presbyterian Church when they moved to Asheville. The church organist was a professor of music up at Cullowhee, who only made the trip to Asheville once a week, so Joanne played for all of the weddings and funerals at the church for several years, including a large number of "walk in" weddings. She and Dr. A. Allen Gardiner, a dear, dear friend and long time minister at First Presbyterian, could tell stories that would have you rolling on the floor laughing about some of the rather eccentric weddings in which they'd participated.
An old college friend of Joanne's, Gwenda Ewell (Mrs. John Ledbetter), started a youth choir at First Presbyterian Church, and Joanne helped her with it, playing the organ and piano for the performances. The group traveled about the South presenting their musicals at various churches in the early 1970s.
Joanne's husband, Ken Pankow, started his own engineering and land surveying firm in 1970. In the early years of his company, she was the book keeper, and helped draw maps, skills she'd learned from helping her father in his business, and she sometimes even went out on surveys. Pankow Engineering Co. exists today thanks to her early efforts.
When Joanne's son, John, went to school, Joanne went with him. She signed up to substitute at the Gibbon's Hall School, and later taught full time at the Asheville Country Day School. She taught 4th & 5th grades, then pre-first, and later developed a music program at Country Day. In 1978, she went to substitute at T. C. Roberson High School, and before the year was out, had been offered a permanent position. She continued at Roberson until she took early retirement in the early 1990s. She was very active in extra curricular activities at the school, sponsoring several clubs and helping with the Drama programs. Charles Koontz, long time principal of TCR, recalled that she wrote the school fight song. And, for every occasion, retirements, weddings, babies' births, etc., she was always ready to compose a poem for the occasion. Her poems were always funny, and always filled with love. And her students often spoke of her caring, her humor and her ability not only to teach, but to instill a sense of self respect in her students.
The early 1980s were a time of loss and sadness. Joanne's dearly loved aunt, Faye Stearns (Mrs. Clyde) Fesperman, died on 3 March 1980, and a dear, beloved friend, Dr. George Catlett Rowe died on 3 Jan. 1981. Joanne's dear mother, Eunice Virginia Stearns (Mrs. John) Field, died 1 June 1983.
In the later 1980s, Joanne discovered a new enthusiasm in life. She decided she wanted to be in a play. She began her acting career by being cast as one of two leads, "Aunt Abby," in "Arsenic and Old Lace," at the Hendersonville Little Theatre, and continued to perform at H. L. T., Asheville Community Theatre, Belfry Players and Asheville Repertory Theatre, as well as appearing in productions of "Murder A La Carte," a company based in New York that presented murder mystery entertainments at hotels and resorts. Among her favorite roles were those of "Aunt Abby" in "Arsenic," "Miss Prism" in "The Importance of Being Earnest," and "Madame Arcati" in "Blythe Spirit," all at H. L. T.; "Eliza Gant" (Thomas Wolfe's mother) in "Look Homeward, Angel" and "Amanda" in "The Glass Menagerie," at A. C. T.; and "Carrie Watts" in "The Trip to Bountiful," at the Belfry Players. She and her son John enjoyed appearing in plays together.
One night, after a play, a lady came back stage and said she was an agent and would like to try to get some professional work for Joanne. Her reaction was predictably funny and humble: "You mean someone would actually pay me to do something I love so much?" The next thing we knew, she had a recurring role on the television series "In the Heat of the Night," where Carroll O'Connor helped launch her career as a professional actress.
Joanne took early retirement from teaching in order to pursue a career as a professional actress in the early 1990s. She appeared in more than 60 productions... films, television series, tv movies, commercials, etc. She traveled as far as New York and New Orleans, but most of her film work was done in Atlanta and Wilmington, NC. She appeared in "Two Soldiers", which won an Academy Award in 2004, and was in three films that were in competition at the Sundance film festival in 2005. A partial list of some of her films, as well as photographs of her in some of them, can be found on the Internet Movie Database at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0659600/
Joanne began having some health problems in 2005, but one production company wanted her so badly for a commercial they were doing that they came and filmed it at her house.
A Hollywood casting director told her son, "I always tell people about your mother -- she's such a wonderful inspiration." That she was. She used to say, "I am so blessed to have found this late in life."
And, even more than the acting itself, I think she loved the fascinating people she met. She never met a stranger. She loved people and they loved her. I think that is what gave her such a brilliant talent as an actor, the ability to love and understand characters, as she loved and understood people.
The lights may have dimmed here, and the final curtain call has passed, but on another stage, I believe the curtain is opening on a new Adventure -- and, doubtless, there is applause.
In the funeral sermon, preached by Father William J. Martin of All Saints' Anglican Church, which Joanne and her family had attended in later years, Father Martin said:
"...We thank God for a life well lived. We thank God for a dedicated wife and mother. We thank God for a caring and loving teacher. We thank God for a woman of many talents, who blessed us with her many gifts. We praise and thank God for the time that she had with us.
"We are a people of hope. we believe that we are only passing through this world, on our way to the next. And what is significant to remember is that we have been blessed by the Permanent Things which filled the heart of Joanne Pankow and were extended to so many people. The Permanent Things come from Our Lord and Saviour. The Permanent Things are those pieces of sanctity, love, care, good will, help, beauty and truth which have flowed through Joanne to all of us.
"The Permanent Things are those gifts of God, which she embraced and passed on to us. We are all just passing through. Joanne was just passing through. But as she moved through this dimension, she passed on to us what she had received from God. And what she received from God and passed on touched lives, brought goodness, charity, and incredible talent to a world that is bent of never receiving anything like that. She passed on to us what God had given to her. And what God had given to her, gave hope to those who did not have it, love to those in pain, faith to those in despair. We are blessed for Joanne who was just passing through, but not before she passed on to us the gifts of God.." (21 Nov. 2009)
In her school yearbook, the inscription under Joanne's picture was the quote that begins, "She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies..." Joanne walked in beauty all her life, offering love and joy to each life she touched. Everyone who knew her loved her and will miss her greatly, but should take comfort in the thought that she is "Past all pain and tears, past all cares and griefs…over in the Summer Land".
