The legend of Joanne Mahoney is writ large upon my family.
My Dad recalls when Joanne Lindsmeyer was the prettiest girl in town and he and all his buddies had crushes on her. He still grinds his teeth when he says “We couldn’t believe that Joe Mahoney got her!”
My husband, Jay, grew up next door to the Mahoneys and fondly remembers when Joanne was one of the most enthusiastic basketball boosters in town.
I met Joanne when I was fourteen years old.
She scared the crap out of me.
She couldn’t have been kinder to me but there was something about this lovely, elegant, soft spoken woman, standing in the middle of the Picket Fence, which even then was the embodiment of her esthetic vision that was extremely intimidating. I felt like I was meeting the Queen.
Actually, meeting the Queen probably would have been easier; I wasn’t about to ask Elizabeth for a job.
Had I been a little less young and stupid I would have high tailed it out of there since clearly a kid who had trouble matching the shoes on her feet had no business offering her services to someone with such obviously impeccable taste. Had Joanne been a little less patient and wise, our professional relationship would have been short and unproductive.
Forty years, dozens of shows, thousands of designs later, I had more than gotten over my awe of her; we were friends.
I realized fairly early on that she intimidated everyone, not just me. It was her unshakable faith in her own artistic vision that gave her confidence. She had an unerring eye for beauty and detail. She knew what looked good, she knew what worked and she wasn’t afraid to enforce her vision. She ran a successful retail establishment for four decades without once saying that the Customer is Always Right. The customers were frequently wrong about what they thought they wanted and Joanne never hesitated to correct them. If she couldn’t convince them of the error of their ways, she would invite them to shop elsewhere. She didn’t start the Picket Fence to set ugly needlepoint loose upon the world.
Her standards were the highest possible and she expected and accepted nothing less from any of us.
Once when we went out for lunch together, she didn’t care for the table we’d been seated at. She asked the host if we could switch tables. When she didn’t care for the second table he gave us either, we switched restaurants.
Graduating from school didn’t make me feel grown up. Getting married and having kids didn’t make me feel like a grown up. It was the first time I said ‘no’ to Joanne. I don’t even remember what we were discussing but I said ‘no’ and she said “okay, what do you want to do?” and at that moment, I knew I was an adult. Joanne’s forte was to suggest things to me I wouldn’t have thought of in a hundred years and had no idea how to do and then encouraging me until I did it. I’m sure I wouldn’t be the same artist today if it hadn’t been for Joanne.
Joanne and I spent hundreds of hours in that back room at the Picket Fence. I’d say only about half of that time was spent discussing needlepoint. Over the years, we solved most of the worlds problems back there, usually over chocolate. Godiva, if we had it but Hershey’s kisses were fine, too. We weren’t picky.
Despite the fact that she always looked like she just stepped out of the beauty salon and I usually had paint flecks all the way up both forearms, we had a lot in common. The way we felt about our families, our friends, our faith and our country; about life in general, both this one and the next.
In a way, I think we lived vicariously through each other. In my imagination, I’d love to be an elegant, regal lady who could stroll into the fanciest restaurant in town and freeze the marrow of a maitre D with a look and I’m pretty sure that in her daydreams, Joanne was all alone in her studio for days on end, up to her elbows in paint and never wearing shoes.
We laughed ourselves into fits on more than one occasion.
Sometimes we cried. I was there when she got the news about Denny’s cancer. She looked at me and said “I can’t lose another child; I can’t bear it.”
But she did. She bore it with a strength I can only hope to emulate when faced with such a situation.
But here’s the thing; nothing and no one is lost. I know she believed that. She was as confidant in her faith as she was in her taste.
Coco Chanel said “Fashion says ‘me too’; Style says ‘Only me.’” That was Joanne. With her passing, the world has lost a little bit of beauty, a little bit of grace and a whole lot of style.”
That was the eulogy I delivered for my friend and mentor, Joanne.
Public speaking is not and will never be my thing. I wasn’t nervous until I was actually standing at the lecturn, looking out at the congregation but then my guts began doing backflips. I suppressed them as best as I could but I’m pretty sure my voice shook. A shaky voice is okay under the circumstances. I think concentrating on not shaking was the only thing that kept me from getting all choked up.
To my surprise, mine was the only eulogy and I delivered it at the very beginning of the service. I’m glad; I had no time to think about it.
People seemed to like it. Everyone agreed that I painted a true and fairly complete picture of her. Not that you can ever do that with anyone in two pages but still…
Ginny, Joanne’s daughter in law and successor at the Picket Fence is the one who asked me to speak. She told me that the family agreed they wanted someone outside to deliver the eulogy and she said I was the first one to come to mind. “She’s smart, erudite and funny and she’s known Joanne forever!” is what Ginny said she told her family.
What a great compliment!
At the family gathering afterwards, she told me that her daughter turned to me after I spoke and said “Great choice, Mom!”
Again, what a compliment.
As I told one of her granddaughters, I will miss Joanne, but never with sadness.
She lived 90 good years, left a legacy of a large, gorgeous family and a nationally renowned business with her mark all over it. Last Sunday, she visited her son in the morning then went for lunch with friends. She and one of her oldest friends decided to stop at Lunds on their way home.
Mary dropped Joanne at the door and went to park the car. Joanne went into the store and had a heart attack.
My reaction at hearing how she spent her last day was to think “Well done, Joanne! Well done!”
She died out and about, having spent the day with friends and family and even squeezed in a visit to her favorite grocery store.
I’ll bet you anything she was smiling when she went.
See you later, Joanne.