Joan Frisch

Joan S. Frisch

Passed suddenly but gently with family by her side on April 7, 2014.  A resident of Berkeley for over 50 years, Joan was born during the depression in East Yorkshire England.  She joined the Signal Corps of the ATS in the British Army, serving at the end of World War II and in the British occupation of France and Germany.  She joined the British Consular Corps and was posted at the embassy in Washington D.C., the consulate in Toronto, and at the United Nations, before moving west to California. She obtained her U.S. Citizenship, worked at Standard Oil of California, and met and married her late husband Joseph, an engineering professor at U.C. Berkeley.  Later in life, in addition to maintaining her proper English Garden in the Berkeley Hills (using her military training against the local deer population), she also took to writing, and published Memoirs of a Yorkshire Lass on her 80th birthday.  Joan was preceded in death by her husband Joseph and her sister Margaret McGuire.  She is survived by her son Jonathan, her step-daughter Teri Sallette (Michael) and step-son Erich, and her sisters Kathleen Iles, Patricia Burrell and Marjorie Jervis, as well as many nephews and nieces on both sides of "the pond."  Her good humor, wonderful stories and twinkling blue eyes will be missed by her friends and family, but we know she will be watching over us with a smile and a cup of tea, or quite possibly a small whiskey in her hand.  A celebration will be arranged by the family later this spring.