Village Nursery School co-founder,
arts enthusiast, avid gardener
Joanne Kronauer. (Courtesy photo)
Joanne Edwards Kronauer, 92, died August 23, 2015, in Tucson, Arizona. Joanne was a longtime resident of Harvard, moving from Cambridge in 1954 with her husband, Richard, to a large, drafty farmhouse, a leaky barn, and 70 acres of mixed forest and tumbledown apple trees. Their home on Old Littleton Road remains in the family.
Joanne Edwards grew up in Findlay, Ohio, and later in Ridgewood, New Jersey, where she met Richard in high school, from which she graduated in 1941. She attended the University of Maryland. Joanne was a childhood victim of polio, and at the age of four she was sent to Warm Springs, Georgia, where she met Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Harvard was very rural in the postwar decades, and even with her disability, Joanne still managed the farm, three closely aged children, farm animals, the usual canine and feline attendants, a large pony, and her own robust vegetable garden. Her connection to the town of Harvard was very strong. She helped to establish the Village Nursery School and was active in the Garden Club for many years.
Joanne and Richard shared an intense interest in modern art, and she was a docent at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum for several years. They were modest but dedicated art collectors and loved to scour the New York City galleries and attend the hot new exhibits of those times. They also loved to travel and spent time in Europe, especially the UK, and also a year with the children in Australia when Richard was teaching at the University of Queensland. Opera was another shared passion, and the couple took advantage of season tickets at the New York Met that had been “passed down” from Richard’s parents. Joanne was not a musician per se, but she encouraged music in the home, and she and Richard would play recorder duets while the Belgian sheepdog howled.
Joanne and Richard retired to Tucson in 2001, at an academic enclave near the Rincon Mountains. Richard is still actively associated with Harvard University and its sleep research unit. Joanne is also survived by her three children, Karen, Charles, and Anne, and six grandchildren.
