SLATALLA, Joan

Today's New-Herald, Lake Havasu City, AZ - Posted: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - Joan Slatalla, loving wife and mother and a 30-year resident of Lake Havasu City who last year published a mystery novel as well as a memoir co-written with her two sisters, died March 17, 2014 in Scottsdale after a six-month fight against cancer. She was 72. She will be deeply missed by Al, her husband of nearly 54 years; her four children and their spouses; her ten grandchildren; her two sisters and their children, and the large community of friends and neighbors whose lives she touched. Joan was born Aug. 5, 1941 in the remote hills of eastern Kentucky, she later lived for nearly 30 years in the Chicago suburb Elmhurst, Ill. before moving to Lake Havasu City, where she was a co-founder of the Lake Havasu City Duplicate Bridge Club. An avid bridge player, she was a Gold Life Master who loved to travel to tournaments—and often played as many as four sessions a day at nationals. She was a longtime member of the Arizona Federation of Republican Woman and of the Daughters of the American Revolution, having traced her family’s roots to the Mayflower. All her life she wrote poetry, and a poem titled Why Write in her memoir Garden of Memories by Mary’s Girls explains why: “You can see, it’s much too hard for me, to drop a thought into the trash. Who knows when I might need it?” In addition to her beloved husband, Al, of Lake Havasu City, survivors include her four children and their spouses, Michelle (Josh); Jack (Cheryl); Joe (Dana), and Dan (Linda); her ten grandchildren; and her adored sisters Margaret Porter of Prestonsburg, Ky. and Judy Hyde of Chicago and her niece Mary Ann Prater, the three of whom traveled through a snowstorm to be at her side earlier this month in Scottsdale.