Josephine "Jo" Stead

Josephine Stead, "Jo" was born in Pasadena, California to Gertrude (Smith) Hamlin and John H. Hamlin. She had two sisters, Cecily Ann and Gwendolen Eleanor. She graduated in 1952 from the Westridge School in Pasadena, before moving across the country to attend Bennington College in Vermont, where she majored in music and the Russian language. Her father was active with the Republican State Central Committee of Central California, and when Eisenhower was elected president, the family moved to Washington, DC, where John served as Executive Assistant to the President. After college, Jo moved to New York City to attend the Mannes School of Music. She stayed in New York to work for the architectural firm IM PEI. However, when her parents founded Helicon Farm in Shaftsbury, Jo returned to Vermont to join the fun. The family raised and showed Morgan horses, and Jo's pride and joy was the mare Waseeka's Party Doll. Through their mutual love of horses, she met a Swiss man, Luther Eugene Zai. They married in 1964 and moved to the village of Jericho Center, Vermont. Luther worked as a Forestry professor at the University of Vermont. They had two children, Louisa Emily and Peter Johannes. Their lives changed abruptly when Luther lost his life in a house fire at Helicon Farm on Thanksgiving in 1968. During the following years as a single woman with two small children, Jo reinvented herself. She discovered that she loved outdoor life in Vermont, and she became an avid cross-country skier, hiker, camper, and tennis player. She also dabbled in rock climbing, sailing, downhill skiing and windsurfing. She also encouraged and supported the many interests of her children, making the rounds to nordic ski races, ice hockey practice, and pony club meets. She remarried in 1971 to James Landis Stead, and her third child, Katherine Tyler Stead was born in 1973. The marriage ended in 1985. To support her family, Jo got a real estate license and became a top seller for her office in Shelburne. Jo was both tenacious and adventurous. For example, in the summer of 1979 she took her three children on an epic trip across the USA. They left before dawn one morning and drove in a simple black GMC van (with no AC! No cell phone!) across the country, visiting friends and stopping at national parks to camp and explore along the way. The trip took 45 days, and Jo loved every minute of it, often declaring it to be the best trip she ever took. This is saying a lot, because she loved to travel and went all over the world, visiting many countries across six continents. When she wasn't travelling, she enjoyed learning foreign languages. She also enjoyed hiking in Vermont, which she often did with her good friends, the Mountain Mamas. Jo was an introvert and a morning person, who, to the amusement of her friends, might fall asleep at parties that lasted past 8 pm! Regardless, she had a huge circle of friends who shared her love of adventure, and they often gathered for dinners, parties and trips. Many of these friendships endured lifetimes. To her kids, Jo became "Jo Mama" a name she good-naturedly embraced. Jo loved children, and fortunately Peter came through with grandchildren, Brittney and Lucas. Brittney and Jo were particularly close, forging a bond that most grandparents would envy. To know Jo, was to know that she was strong, and maybe even stubborn. This inner steel enabled her to power through the harsh Vermont winters and do things like join a bike ride and decide on a whim to do the longer 100 mile route, or to make the 15 day Camino de Santiago hike in Spain, or ski 99 miles in the Canadian Ski Marathon, earning the silver Coureur des Bois award, or to learn to ride a motorcycle in a course on a weekend, and then take it on a three-hour interstate drive to visit one very surprised daughter. In her 80th year, Jo was still leaving her kids in the dust on the cross-country ski trail and learning to paddle board. At 84, she made the decision to leave Vermont and move to Asheville, North Carolina, where she could be closer to her sisters and daughter Katy, retiring to the Deerfield Episcopal Retirement Community in 2018. She initially made a lot of male friends at Deerfield, as only the men could keep up with her on the tennis court! Her toughest match arrived in the form of Parkinson's disease. Even though it slowed her down a lot, she still could confound her kids by zipping off pushing her stroller at mach speed. She also charmed the staff at Deerfield, who called her Jo-Jo and took wonderful care of her in her final years. It was not uncommon for staff to stop by her apartment after their shifts, just to say hi. Jo almost made it to 91, leaving us on October 10, one month shy of her birthday. Her last days were spent reminiscing with family, rereading her wonderful newsletters "Steady as She Goes," and listening to Mozart. She is survived by her sisters Cecily Hamlin Wells and husband Robert Wells, and Gwendolen Hamlin and husband Don A. Wilson, her children: daughter Louisa Zai-Ravaris and husband Paul Ravaris, son Peter Johannes Zai, granddaughter Brittney Zai, grandson Lucas Zai, daughter Katy Watkins and her husband Jason Watkins. A memorial service will be held at a trailhead in Vermont in the summer of 2026, please reach out for details. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to The Parkinson's Foundation www.parkinson.org or the Green Mountain Trail Association https://www.greenmountainclub.org/donate-to-green-mountain-club-2/ To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Josephine "Jo" Stead, please visit our floral store.