Joanne T. Wilder

Through will power and stubbornness—and daily visits and calls from her family—Joanne Tedder Wilder lived independently until a month shy of her 91st birthday. She died February 12, 2026 after a brief stay at Bethesda Memorial Hospital in Boynton Beach.

Joanne was born to Minnie and Aaron Tedder at their home outside of DeLeon Springs on March 16, 1935. She was the youngest of four children, the baby, and grew up in the last vestiges of frontier Florida. Her family had chickens, hogs, and cows in the yard and an orange grove out back—and no air conditioning to cool summer nights. In 1942, the Tedders moved south to Belle Glade, and she traded a beloved maple tree and oaks-made-for-climbing for Australian pines and flat, muck-rich farmland.

At 12, after a day of swimming, bicycling, and horseback riding, Joanne went to sleep with a fever and woke up the next morning in a polio ward at St. Mary’s in West Palm Beach, where she spent six months paralyzed and isolated from her family. She traveled to Warm Springs, Georgia, where President Franklin Roosevelt established the country’s only devoted polio hospital. After physical therapy and rehabilitation in its mineral waters, Joanne fully recovered.

Joanne graduated from Belle Glade High School, where she was voted Most Flirtatious. She fell in love with Carney Wilder of rival Pahokee High. He nicknamed her Taters, and they married on December 26, 1953, an anniversary they celebrated for 49 years with a bottle of Perrier Jouet Champagne. She became a mother a year later, balancing newlywed life in Deland, Florida, where Carney attended and played football at Stetson University (and Joanne wrote most of his college papers … she should have gotten an honorary degree). The couple returned briefly to Pahokee before settling permanently in Delray Beach, where Carney coached the Seacrest Seahawks and Atlantic Eagles tennis and football teams for decades.

In mid-century Delray, a middle-class family could afford to raise three children a mile from the beach, drive a Triumph convertible, and keep a freezer stocked with lobster from the Keys. Over the years, Joanne worked as a soda jerk, secretary, a court reporter, bookkeeper at the Colony, realtor, and briefly, unseriously as a multi-level marketing saleswoman for MonaVie’s açai fruit juice blends (maybe those antioxidants really did work). She was also the lifelong assistant coach to Carney, a proud wife in the stands and mom in the bleachers. She fed and housed football players and hosted epic parties after home games. The Wilder house was open and often bursting at the seams.

The Wilders were also known for their Cracker Day celebrations in honor of their Florida heritage and forebears. They shut down the block and served a few hundred friends, neighbors, and party crashers a meal of swamp cabbage, smoked ribs and chicken, and fried fish and gator. Joanne was an exceptional country cook, known for her creamed corn (from cobs harvested no longer than 24 hours), crowder peas, frog legs, pepper-heavy fried grouper and crappy, and coconut and key lime pies. She overcooked pork roasts. No one is perfect.

Joanne’s father and brother taught her to play cards, and, in turn, she taught her children and grandchildren gin rummy and solitaire. Her mother and grandmother were militant about grammar and the precise use of language, which contributed to her word game prowess—particularly newspaper crosswords and competitive Wordle. Joanne read romance novels, tended to orchids, and collected frog figurines. As a grandmother, she rocked colicky infants late into the night, babysat, and refereed raucous living room wrestling sessions. After Carney retired, the couple traveled in a motorhome to New Orleans, Maine, Canada, North Carolina, and Georgia, all while towing a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle.

Joanne had a few vices: Tia Maria, Almaden Mountain Rhine wine on the rocks, and double dark chocolate Talenti gelato. She gave up smoking after being hypnotized. Joanne was a lifelong tomboy with a mischievous streak. She once shot a cigarette out of a man’s mouth and a rat square in the eye. She wore shorts, polos, and Birkenstocks but no make-up (save for a fuchsia lip). Her beauty care regimen consisted of twice-a-day Oil of Olay, and somehow her 90-year-brow defied wrinkles.

Joanne lived in the same simple, concrete Florida home since 1965. Since 2020, she directed life from a cream leather recliner in her den, from which she watched birds at the feeder and Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy after dinner. Her family, and sons in particular, gathered around their matriarch, ran errands and cooked for her, kept her company, and gave her the hell she so liberally dished out until her final days. 

Joanne lost her parents, husband, sisters Nancy Paff and Joyce Crosby, brother J.A. Tedder, in-laws Addie and C.L. Wilder, and many dear friends. She survived hurricanes, breast cancer, and a global pandemic. And she is survived by her children Cindy Hatchett (Tom), Lee Wilder (Susan), and Chris Wilder (Patty), along with grandchildren Cristen Floyd (Graham), Caroline Hatchett (William Nicholson), Christine Zawislak (Jay), Cale Wilder (Kadie), Courtney Wilder, and Erin Wilder. Joanne adored her special niece Susan Crosby and great-grandchildren Camille, Robert, and Charlotte Floyd, Everett and Rex Zawislak, and Harper Wilder. 

Her family welcomes her friends and community to celebrate Joanne’s long, full life at a funeral mass at St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Delray Beach on Saturday, February 21, 2026 at 10:30 AM. She will be interred in Port Mayaca Cemetery in Canal Point at a later date.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt and St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church.