Joann Louise Feige

Joann Louise Raye Feige was born in the small beachside community of Torrance California. The adjacent beaches were her childhood passion. After completing high school, she took her jumping horse, Fiona, along and moved north to San Luis Obispo, attending Cal Poly and earning a Bachelor’s Degree in nutrition. She continued her education, earning a Masters Degree at Emery College in Atlanta, followed by a few years of internship at the Emery University Hospital. Joann spent the next several years working for Bristol Meyer and Smith Klein, between engaging in her other passions of world travel and literature. Her voracious appetite for reading resulted in a couple books a month over the years.

She met her husband, Geoff Feige in Kathmandu Nepal, where they were each staging to go high altitude trekking in various parts of the Himalayas back in the early 1990s. Joann was heading off to the Anna Purna area, Geoff to the Solu Kumbu by Everest. Subsequently, Joann moved to Lake Tahoe in 1997. A non-skier, she quickly expanded her exercise regimen of jogging into the sport of skate skiing during the winter months at the Tahoe City Nordic Center. She completed the 26-mile Great Race over 8400 ft. Mt. Watson after two years in the sport. The next few years Joann donated her after-school hours as an instructor with the Tahoe City XC Center’s children ski program, Strider Gliders, as her son Nicholas was progressing through the ranks with his elementary school friends. She also periodically volunteered in the classrooms and other events at her son’s schools.

Joann is survived by her husband, Geoff Feige, and teenage son Nicholas Feige, of Tahoe City, her mother Joy Raye, now living in Auburn, CA, her brother Steve Raye’s family of Tigard, OR, and numerous nephews, nieces, cousins, aunts and uncles. All will miss her good-natured smile and disposition, uncanny wit, and commitment to children.