Joan Anne Wayne

Joan was born in North Shields, in the north of England near Newcastle, at 10am on 6/25/21 - “a very hot summer’s day”, by her mother’s report. She has a younger brother Geoffrey, born 7 years later, who still lives in the north of England. She moved to London at age 13 for a short time, and then on to Worthing on the south coast.

She was an excellent student at Worthing High School for Girls, but was not able to continue to college due to financial reasons. She left school at age 16 and worked at various secretarial positions – she had extremely fast shorthand and typing speeds. She stayed the longest at Marsh & Ferriman, a legal office. At one point the secretaries there banded together to complain about working conditions. They drew straws to decide who should approach management and Joan drew the short straw. She gathered her courage and went in to speak. Conditions improved as a result, but she was then labeled a troublemaker – a very unfair label, as anyone who knows her will attest!

Seeking more interesting positions, she moved to London to work for the Daily Mirror, a national newspaper which still exists today. She then saw an advertisement for bilingual secretaries (she was fluent in French, having learned it at school) for the World Health Organization, and applied and was offered a position at their headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. She lived in Geneva for about two years and had many friends in the secretarial pool. One of them was Maria, a Polish princess who had escaped from the Nazis by standing up to her neck in a river for hours and then swimming across in the dark. Another was Ivy, who later became my godmother. She worked very hard, but she and her friends also had some great weekends on the French Riviera, which was within driving distance!

Meanwhile, she had met and fallen in love with her husband Arthur shortly before leaving the UK. Joan had a talent for ballet and was semi-professional - she still has great flexibility for someone her age. She belonged to Worthing Ballet Club and met Arthur, a concert pianist, when he played for a performance for which she was narrator. After a number of visits home, she returned to England to marry him on October 8th, 1951. (Some of those visits were scary – she recounts flying through - not over - the Alps in thunderstorms, with lightning bolts flashing off the sides of the mountains, and the twin-propeller plane bucking wildly from side to side!)

Joan and Arthur settled in Worthing and had two children, Timothy (1953-1973) and Penelope (born 1957). Arthur’s son Richard from a previous marriage also lived with them until he went to college at Cambridge University.

In 1963 Joan finally went to college herself, at the age of 42! There was a shortage of teachers locally, and she was recruited for a two-year training course for what were then called “mature students”. She specialized in English, and loved her time at Brighton College (about 10 miles from Worthing). At the end of the course she got a job at Selden Junior School in Worthing, teaching what in the US would be called third grade but in the UK was “second year juniors”. It was a tough school in an economically difficult area – a real baptism of fire, but she did have some classes and children she loved there, some of whom stayed in touch with her for many years after. Later she taught at two other local schools, Storrington and Durrington, where she was Deputy Head (assistant principal, in US English).

In 1975 she made a big move away from Worthing to Pirton in Hertfordshire, about 30 miles north of London, to be Deputy Head in the village school there. She taught a combined kindergarten/first grade class, age 5-7. The village was a welcoming community, and school principal Geoff Welch and his wife Susie in particular became great friends – Susie is still in touch with Joan, and they went for a brief trip to Paris together through the Channel Tunnel a few years ago. She made one more school change, to another local school (St. Michael’s?) with an interesting immigrant population, before retiring in 1981. Again, quite a few students kept in touch with her.

In 1991 she decided to move back to the south of England. She bought the house belonging to her daughter (who had recently moved to Boston for work) in Lewes, Sussex, a very interesting town dating from about the 7th century, with a priory and castle dating from the 11th century. She really loved her time there, and made many great friends with whom she shared many interests. She was a member of the Quaker Meeting, and also belonged to a writers’ group which published several anthologies. Her best friend there was Anne, who still writes to her.

In 2006 she bravely immigrated to the US, at the age of 85, to live with her daughter, son-in-law and grandson in Wayland. She arrived the day before her grandson’s 7th birthday – a great present for him! She became a member of the Wellesley Friends Meeting (Quakers) where she made some new friends, especially Patsy. Of course, she also went back to visit England quite a few times, to see her friend Anne, her cousin Shirley (and Shirley’s children Sophie, Ben and Amy and grandchildren), and her stepson Richard and wife Brenda (and their children Carol and Andrew).

In 2014 she moved to the Cypress neighborhood of Briarwood. Her daughter Penelope (whom most people call Penny), son-in-law Rick, grandson Ben and friend Carol visited regularly. Joan loved music, beautiful pictures, children, flowers -- especially the garden at Briarwood! – and most of all, her family.