It was difficult not to be joyful when you were with her.

Joan Dempsey Sanborn was born on October 2, 1927, on the Baie de Chaleurs, the north shore of New Brunswick, Canada, to Wilbur and Mildred Dempsey. As the middle child of thirteen, Joan attributed her small stature to being “squished from both sides.” She grew up on a subsistence farm — plow horses, milk cows, root cellar, and lots of chowder — and no electricity or cars. 

When she was 16, the priest was called to perform the last rites for Joan. Fortunately, her older sister Sarah, who lived in Maine, took her to a doctor in Portland — with a hefty dose of iron she was instantly alive and lively. Staying in Maine, Joan lived with her Aunt Mary, finished high school, then worked in a Blue Cross/Blue Shield office.

While in Portland High School, she met her future husband, Warren Sanborn. Many of their dates were trips on his Indian motorcycle. Unfortunately, he was Protestant. When her very Catholic aunt and mother asked her if she “had to get married,” Joan was quite aware of what that euphemism meant, and merely translated it to the language of her own heart. She answered, “Yes I do.”

Joan and Warren raised three wonderful boys (one of them is writing this, so take it with a grain of salt) — and, in case you are wondering, the first arrived 11 months after they were married. They moved to Norwalk, Calif., late in 1963 and later to Long Beach. Warren started his own dental lab, Joan was a housewife/child-raiser. Warren became a lawyer and Joan an antique shop owner, and then a front office worker for Long Beach City Schools.

She was a fun mother! Joan wrestled, she cuddled, she rode with her kids on sleds and bicycles, she got down on the floor with the kids and all of their friends to play games, she went skinny-dipping, she put on wool socks to slide across newly waxes floors.

One of her sisters told her, “Joan, whatever you put your hands to, you do well.” She often made clothes for her young children. She learned upholstery on her own by dismantling old furniture — and when she finally took a class she was asked to help teach it. She knitted, sewed and quilted. And when there was physical work to be done, she didn’t want to stop until it was all finished.

After Warren’s untimely death in 1997, Joan remade her life with a move to Arcata to be near her son Alan and his family. She took classes at HSU, joined a writing group and a quilting group. She spent summers at a house she bought back near her family home on the Baie de Chaleurs. With her buddy Paul Llewellyn, she took camping trips to Arizona, up the Pacific Coast and across the country to her Canadian home. At 85, for a month she hiked to the highest point in almost all of Maine’s counties and swam in two different lakes each day.

Joan could not sit still. She never met a stranger. She loved to be the center of attention and she had a shaky sense of boundaries. She approached everyone as if they couldn’t help but love her. As her very slow-moving dementia progressed, all of those attributes only got stronger — which wasn’t always helpful. But she was very graceful in accepting her declining capabilities.

And she drank tea — black tea, a little milk, no sugar — cup after cup every day. And she played cards — any game, any time. And she had a smile for you and a twinkle in her eye until her very last days.

Joan is survived by sons Alan (and Lisa), Neal (and Julie) and Scott (and Sue); grandchildren, Schuyler, Melanie, Philip, Andrew, Liam and Aoife; great-grandchildren Averhy and Eden. If anyone would want to make a donation in her name, please consider doing so to Frye’s Care Home or Hospice of Humboldt.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Joan Sanborn’s family. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.