Richard Arnold Joseph

Born to Louis Joseph and Naomi Levinson in New York City in 1929, he was raised in the Bronx and Far Rockaway, Queens. He served in the US Marine Corps as a radio journalist during the Korean War. After marrying his wife, the late Ann Terry, in 1959, he moved his family to Billie Holiday’s former apartment on west 87th St, then to Stuyvesant Town where he and Ann had two children, John and Julie. He worked on Madison Avenue for the J. Walter Thompson agency for two years, emulating the lifestyle of the fictional Don Draper of Mad Men. In 1966 he moved his family to London, England to work for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and then relocated to Croton-on-Hudson in 1969. He worked in commercial real estate with his father and uncles in Manhattan, then in residential real estate in Croton.

Dick’s true passion was jazz, and he played in the NYC clubs Blue Note and Maggie’s Place and later formed his own band in Croton, the Melrose Five. He played his clarinet with an improvisational brilliance, closing his eyes and creating music from his soul. His mind was fluid and adept, like his music, and his humor spontaneous and irreverent. In his 80s, after having trouble backing his car into a spot in the Croton post office parking lot, he declared that he had “Parkington’s Disease.” In 2017, after Ann passed away the previous year, Dick moved to Boulder, Colorado to be close to his son, John. Dick was remarkably resilient in his 90s, surviving two bouts of Covid, several falls, and many hospital visits. In the last two years of his life he found love with his girlfriend Leah. He was still strikingly handsome and mentally sharp until he took his last breath. He is survived by his son John of Boulder, his daughter Julie of Mt. Kisco, NY, his brother Stephen of South Orange, NJ, and his adopted son Lawrence Lazare, of Pensacola, Florida.