A Poignant Story in Today's Paper

The sad saga of a favorite aunt.

Atlanta, GA

January 20, 2024

Until this morning, I wouldn’t have shared this story. But seeing that the Wall Street Journal just did, I can’t help but offer some thoughts. 

With temperatures in the teens, I walked down the drive, picked up the paper, and got chills up my spine. There, on the front page below the fold, was an article I didn’t expect.

The piece is well-written, thorough, and (based on my knowledge) fair. There was little in it I didn’t already know. Excepting beneficial acts of good-hearted souls, it pains me to reflect that any of it occurred.

The saga is sad. Seeing it in print makes it more poignant, and revived recollections that’ve lain dormant for decades.

Among my fondest childhood memories are moments spent with a favorite aunt. To her pre-teen nephew, Jo Anne was lively, glamorous, gregarious, and fun. 

Tho’ almost everyone called her “Jo”, to me she was always “Jo Anne”, perhaps because (if memory serves) my grandparents sometimes referred to her that way.

I eagerly anticipated my opportunities to visit her. In Tampa, my mother would put my brother and me in coats and ties, and escort us to the National Airlines gate for our two hour flight to see her sister.

After meeting us at the airport, my aunt showed us around Washington, DC. We’d go to the usual places: the Jefferson Memorial, Washington Monument, Smithsonian. I was enthralled.

One of my favorite spots was her second house near St Michaels, Maryland…across the Chesapeake a couple hours from Washington. 

My memory is foggy. But I recall a somewhat secluded house beside a bucolic shore. I was probably ten years old, so I could be conjuring an idyllic image I prefer to preserve. 

Back in DC, Jo Anne took us to the Capitol and the White House. Throughout her later life, she would claim to know plenty of powerful people in these places. 

In earlier years, with her young nephews tagging along, she probably did. But when I was a kid, it didn’t matter. I didn’t care about those people. To me, Aunt Jo Anne was as cool as they came. I was especially impressed when I saw her name, and later her face, on television.

A burgeoning broadcasting career brought her to Washington. She was senior producer of the McNeil-Lehrer Newshour when that program launched.

But the 1980s were her professional peak. During that decade she produced critically acclaimed documentaries on Saudi Arabia, The Oil Kingdoms, and the Space Race. 

But she also broadcast a heavily criticized one, about a people and place filling the headlines today. Presenting the uprisings in the West Bank and Gaza strip from a Palestinian perspective, Days of Rage: The Young Palestinians enraged people in powerful places. 

The acrimony almost kept the documentary from being broadcast. But in the summer of 1989, after book-ending the film with refutations from the opposing perspective, Days of Rage finally aired. 

Regardless opinions on how she portrayed events, most acknowledged Jo Anne was a gifted filmmaker. And it wasn’t easy for women to do what she did during that time, particularly in the places she went.

But Days of Rage appeared to mark the crest of her career. She didn’t seem the same since, tho’ she did all she could to convince everyone otherwise.

If anything, superficial appearances suggested unbridled affluence. Fancy dinners, expensive cars, swank parties, and tall tales were diversionary veneer covering a disturbing descent. But at the time, I attributed her eccentric whimsy to quirky charm. 

Although my mother and uncle had growing suspicions things were “off”, I had no reason to think it was all a ruse, or that Jo Anne might be oblivious she was lying to herself. 

At that point, much as she might’ve been fibbing to everyone else, I’m not sure she’d fooled the face in the mirror. But after fabricating fairy tales to keep living a lie, I think she eventually convinced herself the fables were real.

The next couple decades, Jo Anne and I communicated fairly often, and saw each other with some regularity. If memory serves, she was the first in my family my future wife would meet. Rita liked her immediately, and the feeling was mutual.

When we lived in San Francisco, Jo Anne moved to Malibu. We visited her there on a couple occasions. It was then we started noticing something was awry. 

There was nothing glaring, but several signals. Odd behavior and inconsistent stories began to add up. Little else did. We couldn’t put our finger on it, but something wasn’t right.

But we didn’t worry too much, and stayed in touch. Whenever we did, she assured us things were great. She boasted of owning wineries and horse farms, and of making movies that were always deep in “production” but never released.

The last time I spent meaningful time with my aunt was October 2008. She came to Atlanta and paid a visit to our home. I don’t recall exactly why she was in town, and was skeptical of the story she told at the time. 

Apparently, she’d been in Florida for a government meeting and was on her way to see her exotic horses at some exclusive show in Kentucky. We assumed most of that was false, and probably none of it true. Regardless, by then we’d learn to simply smile and nod.

I saw her briefly a year later, at my grandfather’s funeral. Not long afterward, I lost contact completely, and never heard from her again.

By then we all knew Jo Anne needed professional help. On many occasions her siblings offered. But it was always steadfastly refused (when it wasn’t ignored).

Only in her final year was I aware where Jo Anne was, or the difficulties she endured. My cousins, mother, and uncle found out she was homeless, scraping by on petty larceny, flimsy credit, some Social Security, and the kindness of strangers.

The Journal article describes that sad situation, and the wonderful people who welcomed Jo Anne to their lives. Because of them…and especially my uncle who paid for an apartment…she had a home the last year of her life.

That ended in July. Because of her blessed benefactors, Jo Anne died in the comfort of her own room, rather than on the hard pavement of a hotel garage. 

When I heard the news, pangs of sadness inevitably hit. Not only because my aunt had died. But because I realized the woman I knew had been gone so long, and couldn’t really know when it was she left.

Yet her greatest gifts are still here. And for that her ex-husband, a man I’m still proud to call my uncle, deserves credit.

Her children are a legacy anyone would cherish. I couldn’t be more grateful for our relationship with our wonderful cousins and their fantastic families. Ashley and Hugh are among the most terrific people anyone could hope to know, redemptive heirlooms of a troubled life.

I hope they’re at peace. And that their mother is too.

JD