Joanna Bowen Gillespie

Joanna Bowen Gillespie, professor, musician, writer, historical detective, ardent supporter of people and causes, feminist, woman of faith, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and wife died quietly in her sleep after a gradual decline over the last several years. She was residing at El Rancho Encanto in Tucson, AZ. Sadly due to COVID her family could not be at her side, but from afar she was in our hearts and continual thoughts.

Born in 1929 into a Mennonite family in Northern Indiana that believed in music, education, and “improving yourself,” she and her older brother, Curly, would compete academically and race to play the latest sheet music on the family piano. Her mother was originally Amish until, as Joanna loved to recount, her grandfather “fell in love with the internal combustion engine” and left that faith. Joanna attended Bluffton College, also studying music at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. During the summer of 1949, she hoped to broaden her world by doing community work in Spanish Harlem where she met her future husband, the Very Rev. David Marston Gillespie. They married in 1951 and lived a life dedicated to civil rights, gay rights and more, based in Washington, DC, Skeneatles, NY, Englewood, NJ, San Francisco, CA, East Greenwich, RI, and finally for the past two decades split between Rochester, VT and Tucson, AZ.

In 1973 she received a PhD. in Sociology from NYU and took a teaching position at Drew University, a position she gave up to follow David to a job as Dean of Grace Cathredral in San Francisco. Without a teaching role she affiliated with the Center for Research on Women at Stanford and began research on 18th century women’s spiritual memoirs. Her writings include The Vocation of Companionship [2006], The Life and Times of Martha Laurens Ramsay 1787-1811 [2001], and Women Speak – of God, Congregations, and Change [1995] and many scholarly articles and reviews. She was a co-founder of the Episcopal Women’s History Project and a Companion of the Society of the Holy Cross, an Episcopal women’s religious order (dispersed) associated with the Adelynrood Retreat Center.

In addition to her academic achievements, Joanna was a trained and accomplished musician on piano, organ, and flute, an assertive partner, an adventurous cook, assembler of people, and the hub of family news and connection. David predeceased her in 2019; their son Rob died in 2010, her brother Curly Bowen in ? She leaves her sister Mary Ruth Beaty, her daughter Ann Gillespie, her son-in-law Jeff Allin, Rob’s partner Peg Crane, her grandchildren Spencer, Wesley, and Devin, and her great-grandchildren Jackson and Emilia, as well as devoted nieces and nephews across the country.

There will be a memorial service at Christ Church, Bethel, VT on Aug 7, 2021.

Ref: https://ewhp.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/joanna-gillespie/