Joanne Barbara Ziskin passed away November 5, 2008 at age 68, after a 14-year battle with breast cancer.  She leaves behind a sister, Denise Hughes.  Joanne was a devoted aunt of John Ziskin, Skyann Capriolo and Eric and Lauren Hughes, and a great-aunt of Steven R. Ziskin and Sidra and Zalen Capriolo.  She also was a very dear friend and business associate of Edd Buckley.  In high school Joanne was a close friend of, and since has continued to communicate with, our classmate Susan Zimmerman Wernz.

Joanne was living in Chicago for the past 46 years.  After attending Beloit College following high school she moved to Chicago with a friend from Beloit.  She was going to be a social worker with the Chicago Welfare Department, but ended that career path early when her first assignment was in an area far too dangerous for her to desire to keep that job.

She moved on to media and market research and worked in that area ever since -- right up until the time of her death.  Joanne loved Chicago and turned into a real "big-city" person -- living in a high-rise condo with a great view of Lake Michigan.  She needed no car and bragged that she had been "green all along".

Joanne was a regular at the Chicago Symphony, an irregular attendee at the Opera, loved the museums, the shopping, the lake and the energy that makes Chicago so great.  She still played the piano and enjoyed a good book.  She had no children and no husband; but was a devoted and loving "Auntie" to four and a "Great-Auntie" to five.  Her sister and many nieces and nephews live in Chicago too, so Joanne said that "we have established a small, but mighty, family banch in Chicago." 

Joanne Ziskin was buried in Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis on November 7, 2008.  Anyone wishing to give a memorial in her name may give to the American Cancer Society.