Joan Lois (Alloway) Fitzpatrick

Joan Lois Fitzpatrick (Nee Alloway) was born in Baltimore on July 28, 1933. She was raised in Halethorpe, Maryland and attended grammar school at the Ascension Parish School. Joan attended high school at Seton High School in Baltimore.

During Joan’s high school years she worked in her parent’s store in Baltimore. It was there she met James Donald “Don” Fitzpatick. Don, recently returned from a stint with the United States Army, would come to the store almost daily with a group of his friends and buy a single can of dog food. It was revealed many years later that he did not, in fact, own a dog, but needed an excuse to visit the store to see Joan. (Buying one can at a time meaning that he’d need another the next day to feed the nonexistent dog) The two fell in love and were married on April 14, 1952. The marriage produced six children: John Thomas; Mary Ellen; James Donald, Jr.; Christina Rose, Kathleen Brigid, and Peter Joseph.  There have also been twelve grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren.

Joan worked for a while in the accounting office at The J. Schoeneman Co before taking a job with the City of Baltimore in the Central Payroll Department. Joan took great pride that “the payroll always went out” no matter the circumstances. One often-related story included having to be escorted into work by the National Guard during the 1968 riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, and another told of how she and a small number of her coworkers produced the city’s payroll during the blizzard of 1979. Joan retired in 1991 after 25 years of service.

Joan and Don enjoyed a long retirement together. They spent many years  traveling the country extensively by car and by rail, having made it to just about every state in the Union. Don preceded her in death in 2016 – Joan noting at the time that they “had 60 good years together.” (They were, in point of fact, married for 64 years)

Aside from travel, Joan enjoyed pinochle, gardening, and knitting. She would often use donated yarn to make winter hats for needy children and infants and volunteered for a time tending the gardens at The Little Sisters of the Poor Home. Joan was a deeply devoted wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and friend. She will be missed.