Joan Walls Gaffney, world traveler, raconteuse
Joan Walls Gaffney, 90, was a world traveler and raconteuse. "My face felt like a pancake skillet on four burners. I was trapped, humiliated and - then I saw someone go back through the turnstile." Joan Walls' 11th-grade essay, Some Way, told of her first attempt at trying to find some way out of the New York City subway, and it led the "Literature" section of the 1945 Rye Country Day School Yearbook.
Joan had a knack for storytelling. Even everyday, benign work stories, like one about an exploratory site visit while employed at Health and Human Services could turn salacious with her famous interjection "ta-da, da-da, da-da," which everyone knew signaled she was jumping the narrative arc, and going straight for the punch line: "And so we ended up skinny-dipping in a pool in the Arizona desert and had a delightful time."
Joan's stories were born from her imagination, curiosity and passion to explore life surrounded by her closest friends. As a child Joan would throw a rope ladder out of her second-story bedroom window, climb down wearing a pirate hat, and escape on her bike wielding a machete and swashbuckling imaginary pirates. At Bennington College, Joan's advisers questioned how she would graduate because they did not know how she planned to make her mish-mash of courses on history, art and literature fit into a cohesive major with a senior thesis project. Joan's obvious solution was to produce and direct a play in the ancient Greek style of theater. She enlisted friends from fashion design to help with the costumes, friends in history to help with the theme, friends in music to help with the score, and by the time the curtain was raised there was almost no audience because everyone was in the production.
Her senior thesis might as well be her life's thesis, for she made everyone feel like they had a special part in some grand production.
Joan would go on to work on programs for women and children at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She worked until she was 79, long beyond any normal retirement age, and even told the Social Security Office not to send her checks because it might bump her up into a different tax bracket. She ultimately acquiesced to receiving that money, and used it on her many trips to Italy to paint in the summer.
Her love of Lewes Beach started in the 1970s when she would escape here on weekends to re-energize before returning to work for the federal government. Convinced of the healing properties of its saltwater air, she eventually bought a home on Kings Highway, and upon retirement made Lewes her permanent home. Joan would regularly hold court with her many friends and neighbors - and no friendship was complete until she taught you how to eat lobsters and to drink a proper cocktail. If Joan was out on the town, she always wore one of her many hats, which were profiled by the Cape Gazette in 2013.
Born in New York City Nov. 2, 1927, she died Saturday, April 14, 2018, in her beloved town of Lewes.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Andrew B. Walls Jr. and Verne Wallace; her brother George Hochrein Jr.; and stepbrothers Alden, Gorden and Donald Walls.
In addition to her beloved cat Tigre, Joan is survived by her niece Katy Mutnick and husband Byron of El Paso, Texas; her great-nephew Aaron Mutnick and wife Candace of St. Louis, Mo.; and great-niece Emilee Ashenfelter, husband Kasey and daughter Phoebe of Waco, Texas. Sherry Harmer, Connie Kittrell, Wendell Alfred and Stephanie Tsantes of Lewes were dear friends and confidants who cared for her like family.
A celebration of life will be held in Lewes at a date to be announced. In lieu of flowers, host a dinner party and toast to Joan with a Beefeater Martini with a lemon twist.
