Joan Janosko Stouppe

Joan (Joanie) Marie Janosko Stouppe, daughter of the late Joseph M. Janosko Jr., former Stratford Republican Registrar of Voters, and Regina L. (Olsavsky) Janosko, died on August 28, 2026, at the age of 89, in Grapevine, TX.

To describe Joan simply by the places she lived, the jobs she held, or the many things she accomplished would be to miss the most important part of her story. Joanie was a woman of energy, creativity, humor, determination, and deep love for her family. She carried her Slovak heritage proudly, made a home wherever life took her, found ways to create beauty with her hands, and remained, above all else, Mom to her cherished three.

Joan was born in Bridgeport, CT, on March 27, 1937. She and her parents first lived in the home of her grandmother (Baba), Mary (Najmik) Olsavsky, on Clover Street in Stratford. It was there, surrounded by her closely knit Slovak Olsavsky and Janosko families, that so much of the foundation of Joanie’s life was formed.

She was an active young girl who loved playing sports on Clover Field with the other neighborhood children from the Clover and Light Street areas of Stratford. Those childhood memories stayed with her throughout her life. Years later, she was especially pleased when the town of Stratford honored her father by dedicating the Joseph M. Janosko Jr. Athletic Park at Clover Field. To Joan, the dedication brought together two things she loved dearly: the place that had been such a joyful part of her childhood and the father she loved.

But it wasn’t just sports that captured young Joan’s heart. She took up dance and piano, beginning a lifelong love of the arts. She was curious, talented, and eager to participate. At Franklin School, she was a member of the staff of the Franklin Flash and in 1951 was voted Most Popular, Best Artist, and Best Musician.

At Stratford High School, where she graduated in 1955, Joan seemed to find a place in just about everything. She was a member of the Girls’ Sports Club, the Dramateers, Senior A Cappella, Variety Show, Spanish Club, the Clarion (SHS newsletter), and the CEP (Citizenship Education Project), and she was a cheerleader. She was also a member of the Polka Dot Theater, performing in the dancing chorus of Finian’s Rainbow in 1954. She treasured the memories of those years and especially enjoyed attending her 50th high school reunion, where she could reconnect with old friends and relive pieces of that younger Joanie.

After graduating from SHS, Joan worked as a secretary with the Flight Group Section at AVCO Lycoming in Stratford. There, she fondly remembered being given the opportunity to take a ride in an airplane with one of the pilots. That experience was only the beginning of her connection with airplanes, and with the life that would soon take her far beyond Stratford.

It was at AVCO Lycoming that Joan met her future husband. He would go on to join the U.S. Navy, and they married in 1959, beginning Joan’s life as a Navy wife.

Life as a Navy wife was not always easy. It meant packing up, starting over, and making a home in unfamiliar places. But Joan did it with the same spirit she brought to everything else. Her life took her and her family across the country and across an ocean to Navy bases in California, Texas, Bermuda, Florida, Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and finally Spain.

Along the way, she and her husband had two sons and a daughter, and wherever they were stationed, Joan made a comfortable home for them. Home was something she created, not simply a place where they happened to live.

She had remarkable skills with a needle and sewing machine, and she used them not only to make beautiful curtains and tablecloths for their homes, but also to supplement her own and her children’s wardrobes. In Spain, those skills were put to the test when the clothing she needed was simply not available. So Joan did what Joan did: she made it herself. She produced two white dinner jackets for her sons’ proms, a three-piece suit, and a formal dress for her daughter’s high school dance.

Her creativity extended far beyond sewing. Throughout her life, Joan painted, did crewel work, knitted, and created a much-loved ceramic nativity, among many other crafts. She also continued to play the piano, entertaining her family with Beethoven, more modern classics such as Glow Worm and Alley Cat, and carols at Christmastime.

And wherever in the world she found herself, Joan never let her family lose touch with where they came from. She prepared traditional Slovak meals and baked goods, sharing the food and traditions of her heritage with her own family. She was proud of being Slovak, and that pride became part of the family she built.

Yet Joan was never defined solely by being a wife and mother. She was always curious, involved, and willing to try something new. In Maryland, she participated in the Red Cross volunteer program. She took classes at the University of Rhode Island. In Lakehurst, NJ and became president of the Officers’ Wives Club at the base in Lakehurst, NJ. In Spain, she taught English to Spanish children and chaperoned her oldest and youngest children’s Rota High School southern coast musical trips. And there were always volunteer opportunities at each duty station – whether it was helping organize a Christmas party for military children, a circus to raise funds for further education of children of miliary personnel or a Christmas Bazaar to raise funds for a new sound system for the base movie theater.

And when she had the opportunity to experience Europe, she embraced it. She visited other countries, usually in a very spiffy red two-piece suit with white polka dots. She learned to dance the Sevillanas and sampled local fino and tapas. She didn’t simply live wherever the Navy sent her; she found ways to experience and enjoy the world around her.

After her husband’s retirement from the Navy, the couple returned to Joan’s hometown of Stratford before moving to Newington, CT. There, Joan became the administrative assistant to the Town Manager, a position she held for several years before her own retirement.

Retirement, however, did not mean slowing down. Joan turned her love of crafts into a small business, creating stained-glass ornaments and pictures, pressed-flower arrangements, and raffia dolls, which she sold at the town’s annual summer festival.

And then came another generation to love. When grandchildren and grandnephews were born, Joan lovingly made baby quilts for each one. She didn’t simply make them; she thought carefully about every child, deliberating over colors and patterns until she found what she believed was the perfect combination. It was one more way she expressed what came so naturally to her: making something special for the people she loved.

It was also in Newington that another great love entered her life: West Highland White Terriers. Her beloved Buttons began Joan’s love affair with Westies, a love that continued after Buttons’ loss when a new Westie, Beaux, joined the family in New Bern, NC.

Following her husband’s retirement from his post-Navy career, the couple once again began a new chapter, leaving New England for North Carolina. They moved first to New Bern near the beach, then to the mountains of Hendersonville, and eventually returned to New Bern.

Those years brought Joan closer to members of her Connecticut family who had also chosen North Carolina for their retirement years. She remembered her visits with her beach and mountain cousins as laugh-filled, loving times. Family, wherever they were and however far apart, remained one of the constants in Joan’s life.

During her final years, Joan was challenged by Alzheimer’s and was no longer able to focus on the crafts that had brought her so much joy. But even as the disease diminished her abilities, it could not completely take away the things that made her Joan. She maintained her sense of humor and her love of family and enjoyed visits from her children, siblings, and cousins.

Her final move was to Texas to be closer to her daughter. Even as she declined, her characteristic sass remained. Her caregivers came to love her, despite the relatively short time they had with her, and that too seems fitting. Joan had a way of making an impression.

Because that was Joanie.

She was the girl running and playing on Clover Field. She was the young woman dancing and playing piano, singing and cheering at Stratford High School. She was the young wife who followed her husband around the world and the mother who could sew whatever her children needed when she couldn’t find it in a store. She was the woman who played the piano for her family, baked Slovak desserts, made stained-glass ornaments, stitched baby quilts, learned the Sevillanas, loved her Westies, and somehow made each new place feel like home.

She was also the daughter who remained proud of her parents, the sister, cousin, wife, mother, grandmother, and aunt who cherished her family, and the woman who never lost her sense of humor, or her sass.

While disease diminished her over the years, it never took away the real spark of who she was.

Joanie to most. Mom to her cherished three.

Joan was predeceased by her parents, Joseph and Regina Janosko; her brother, Robert (Bobby) Janosko; her sister, Janet (Janosko) Morash; and her brother-in-law, Michael Morash, as well as several aunts and uncles.

She is survived by her husband of 67 years, David E. Stouppe of Keller, TX; her son, Daniel E. Stouppe, and daughter-in-law, Gail Perciaccante, of Franklin, MA; her son, Andrew J. Stouppe, and daughter-in-law, Karen (Morgan), of Kailua, HI; her daughter, Melinda (Stouppe) Ring, and son-in-law, Rick, of Keller, TX; her sister-in-law, Carol (Walsh) Janosko, of Hendersonville, NC; three grandchildren and four bonus grandchildren, Bela, Carter, Payton, Evan, Katherine, Madeline and Jaqueline; two nieces, Elise and Amy; three nephews, Dave, Jon and Craig ; several great-nieces and great-nephews; and all of her Olsavsky and Janosko cousins.

Arrangements for a service and interment are pending.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in memory of Joan Stouppe to the Graves’ Disease Foundation, the American Diabetes Association, the American Cancer Society, the Alzheimer’s Association, Brooke USA (formerly known as the Donkey Project), or your favorite charity.

But perhaps the greatest tribute to Joan would not be a donation at all. It would be family.

It would be her children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, siblings, cousins, and all the people she loved gathering together, telling stories about the places they had been, the things she had done, and the moments they shared with her. It would be laughing until they cried. Because that is what Joan loved to do with her family.

And if Joanie could have one last wish for the people she left behind, it would surely be that they keep doing exactly that, spending time together, telling stories, laughing until they cry, and keeping the love of this remarkable woman alive in the stories they tell.