Joanne Poor

Joanne was born on June 4, 1945, to Clara Fischer Dolgow and Irving Dolgow in Elizabeth, NJ. A half-brother, Harold (Hal) Tulchin, was 19 years her senior. She is survived by her husband, Roger Poor, and a niece, Ava Seavey.

Joanne graduated from Battin high school in Elizabeth and briefly attended Syracuse University. She stayed in touch with many of her Battin classmates, who knew her as Cookie, through the years, though she moved to the Washington, DC, area. After Syracuse she spent a year in Israel and frequently recalled her adventures there.

Although she spent some years in corporate advertising and public relations, largely in the healthcare sector, Joanne had her family’s gifts of creativity and entrepreneurship. She became an accomplished photographer and founded her first business, Petography, to take commissioned portraits of clients’ pets in Washington, Maryland and Virginia. She regaled her friends for many years with hilarious stories of her encounters with pets ranging from cockatoos to horses and their owners. Joanne’s experience with Petography led her to invent and patent a unique photographic system, which she named the Simulgraphic. This system allowed film photographers to preview their 35mm or large-format shots by taking duplicate Polaroid photos framed and indexed to match the film versions. Joanne sold this patent to Polaroid.

Joanne’s greatest business success was the advertising firm Dolcom, based in Baltimore. Leveraging her knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry, Dolcom specialized in conceptualizing and managing the recruitment of subjects nationwide for clinical trials of new drugs via print, radio, and later internet campaigns. In radio especially her creativity achieved remarkable results, and Dolcom became a leader in its field. Joanne also recognized early the commercial impact the developing internet would have. Operating under the name Netvertising, she created some of the first public web sites for businesses and institutions in the Washington area. Always a loyal friend, Joanne stayed close to her Dolcom employees for the rest of her life.

Joanne had a wonderful sense of humor, extraordinary intelligence, and taste for adventure. A gifted writer, dozens of people urged her to write a memoir about her crazy life. She never got around to writing it but gave it the working title The Stork Had a Bad GPS.

Joanne met her husband, Roger, in 2002 and the couple were never apart after that. They were married on Christmas Day 2005 at Har Sinai synagogue in Owings Mills, Maryland. Both childless, they cherished their friends, family, and poodles – Avi, Mischa, and Loki. Together they truly led their married life for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.