This past weekend, our eldest sister Joanne Marie passed away peacefully. She was extremely gifted and fiercely independent. I remember in my youth  living in her shadow as "Joanne's little sister". She was a child prodigy in music winning competitions at a very tender age. I think my preference for classical music stems from listening to her endless practicing  on the family's grand piano for most of my childhood. To this day certain pieces transport me back to my youth and are inseparable from my memories of her. She was a Marycliff High school graduate and spent some time after graduation in a convent but that turned out not to be her calling. She received an advanced degree in music from Indiana University on full scholarship and I recall her telling me about her piano teacher from Paris who flew in once a month for her lessons at the University. She later earned a medical degree from abroad in a foreign language as it was a time when women had a great deal of difficulty being accepted into medical schools in the US. No one told her No! She travelled extensively throughout the US from Washington state to Indiana to Chicago to Florida then California finally settling in the Seattle area. She never married and lived as an independent professional woman during a time when it was not so easy to do so. She had a flamboyant and formidable personality and I remember her great laugh. I experienced her as a person of remarkable talent, personal strength, integrity and ambition. Her life was well lived.  (Written by her sister Julie)