Dr.
Joanna S. Weinstock (née Smith) passed away peacefully at the
University of Vermont Medical Center — long her school and
workplace —surrounded by her two children and their families.
Those
who had the pleasure of knowing Joanna knew that she was happiest
when active and engaged with the world: cultivating her garden,
researching an ancestor’s genealogy or a medication that might help
someone she knew, marching for social justice or corresponding with
elected officials, creating art with her grandchildren, and exploring
cultures firsthand, both near and far.
Joanna
was born in Glen Ridge, N.J., to Winton and Elsie Smith (née
Cressingham) and was the eldest of their four children. She studied
French, Latin, piano and violin, and was a Girl Scout ambassador,
attending roundups in Idaho, Trinidad and Tobago, and a summer in
Norway.
In
her undergraduate years at Mount Holyoke College and then at New York
University, Joanna studied Russian language and history and continued
her study of French. For the summer of 1967, she was a student behind
the Iron Curtain in the U.S.S.R. and the Eastern Bloc. That July, at
a youth hostel in Denmark, she met the love of her life, Henry
Weinstock, who was leading a Bastille Day celebration of French songs
around the campfire. They soon married in Joanna’s hometown of
Montclair and spent the next half century traveling the world and
sharing their deep love of life with friends, family, community and
everyone they encountered along the way. In the 1970s, they lived in
Hudson Highlands, N.Y., where Henry was a French professor at
Rockland Community College, Joanna completed her master’s degree in
library science at SUNY Albany and worked at local libraries, and
they welcomed their two children, André (Jamie) and Kait.
The
family moved to Vermont in 1984, where five generations of Joanna’s
family had lived. She had fond memories of time spent there as a
youth, hiking Mount Mansfield and sailing on Lake Champlain.
In
1988 while working as a medical librarian at UVM’s Dana Medical
Library, Joanna became aware that the Title IX Act includes a
prohibition against age discrimination for medical school applicants.
This lit a spark in her to achieve her long-buried dream of becoming
a doctor. With her customary determination and focus, she prepared
for and was accepted into the UVM medical school. After graduating in
1997 at the age of 50, she practiced family medicine in Alaska
(Kotzebue, Anchorage and Juneau); Zuni Pueblo, N.M.; and Isla
Mujeres, Mexico. Across these locales, her practice encompassed the
entire range of family medicine, from attending to difficult
deliveries on life-flights above the Arctic Circle, to diagnosing and
reporting the first case of hantavirus of 1999 in the U.S. Joanna
also traveled to China several times to assist with adoptions and
hiked to Machu Pichu as part of an emergency medicine training class.
In
Vermont, Joanna practiced at clinics across Chittenden, Lamoille and
Washington counties before retiring. She nonetheless remained engaged
with medicine by reading medical journals, maintaining her medical
license and fostering the next generation of doctors by interviewing
UVM medical school applicants. One of her last wishes was to donate
her temporal bone for medical research to help understand the hearing
loss caused by Alport Syndrome, which is an inherited syndrome that
affected her and continues to affect her family.
Until
just weeks before her death, Joanna was still eagerly studying
medicine and corresponding with cousins found through her genealogy
research. She remained extremely active by traveling with friends
internationally, hiking with the “Mountain Mamas,” biking,
skiing, dragon boat paddling, gardening and singing with Mountain
Song. She was also a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
and volunteered for the local food shelf.
Joanna
was predeceased by her cherished Henry in 2021. She is survived by
her two children and their families: Benjamin “Jamie” André
Weinstock (Michelle Hewitt) of Somerville, Mass., and Katherine
“Kait” Weinstock Armstrong (Kent) of Jericho and Winooski, Vt.,
and their three children, Scout (Portland, Maine), Helen and Patch.
She is also survived by her three siblings: Polly Smith (New York,
N.Y.); Jeffrey Smith (Jolinda, Sanibel, Fla.); and Meredith Smith
(Robin Carton, Somerville, Mass.); and many nephews, nieces, cousins
and friends worldwide.
A
memorial celebration of Joanna’s life is being planned for this
summer.
In
lieu of flowers or gifts, Joanna requested that donations be made to
the Alport Syndrome Foundation, Doctors Without Borders or Planned Parenthood Burlington Health Center.
Arrangements
have been entrusted to the Ready Funeral and Cremation Services. To
send online condolences, please visit cremationsocietycc.com.