Joellen Scruggs Snow

Cuddebackville, NY

Joellen Scruggs Snow, 86 of Cuddebackville, NY, died on April 7, 2008 in Cleveland, OH, after an extended illness.

Joellen was born March 2, 1922 in Plum Bayou, AR, and moved with her family to Dallas, TX in the mid 1930's. She graduated from high school in Dallas in 1939 and then completed a year of college at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. After being back in Dallas for a time in the early 1940's, she and her friend Wanda took a Greyhound bus to New York City "to become actresses."

In New York, she met and married her husband, Donald Snow, who had come from Oklahoma to become a writer. While Don worked odd jobs to support his writing, Joellen worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad and then for Time Magazine as head of their travel department. She and Don lived in Greenwich Village from the 1940's to the mid 1950's when they bought a house in Brooklyn. Even though, Joellen did not "become an actress", she and Don had many good friends who were or became famous in the arts world of New York City, pretty heady company for a gal born in Plum Bayou, AR.

In the mid 1950's Joellen and Don bought land in Cuddebackville, NY, to "have a place to put a picnic table where they could escape the city." In the early 1960's Joellen and Don together physically built their home made almost entirely of used lumber and materials on this land. They were recycling before anyone called it "recycling."

Eventually, they sold the Brooklyn house and lived in the woods in Cuddebackville where she stayed after Don's death in 1979. Joellen was active in Deerpark Town politics, served on the Board for the Port Jervis/Deerpark Humane Society, served on the local Environmental Board, and loved what she called her "castle" and her "world."

She is survived by her two nieces and their families.

Contributions in Joellen's memory may be made to Humane Society of PortJervis/Deerpark, 199 Route 209, Huguenot, NY 12746, or to the Neversink Valley Area Museum, PO Box 263, Cuddebackville, NY 12729.