It is with a heavy heart that we advise her many friends that we, her husband, her children, and her grandchildren, lost our beloved JoAnne on October 4, 2021.  She was 82 years old.  She was as beautiful at the moment of her death as she was on the day she was born and every day thereafter.  In her last hours she was able to express her love to each of us and we to her.   She was the bravest person any of us will ever know and she taught us all by her example how each of us should face our own moments of crisis.

JoAnne was born on May 21, 1939 in Plattsburgh, New York the elder of two daughters of John B. Todd and Anne Fitzsimmons.  Her father was the owner of Todd Pontiac on upper Cornelia Street.   She began school at St Johns Academy and completed High School at Plattsburgh High School in 1956.  From her very early years, with her younger sister Doris - "Dee Dee", she lived at West Court Street in Plattsburgh.  JoAnne was blessed through the rest of her life with a close, loving, and supportive relationship with her sister.  During those years she also spent frequent weekends at her grandmother Fitzsimmons home in Ausable Forks with her Grandmother, Aunts, Uncle and four Fitzsimmons cousins skiing and playing golf with her Aunt Doris.  Those relationships with her sister and cousins, Linda, Corky, Pat and Michael Fitzsimmons, remained a constant loving part of her life through the adjacent Todd and Fitzsimmons camps on Fern Lake west of Ausable Forks.

Following graduation JoAnne attended Elmira College.  She was not happy there and decided to explore California.  To her parent's horror, she hitchhiked to San Francisco where she worked and lived for a year.  When her father became ill, she returned to Plattsburgh where she remained until her father recovered and then left for the second great adventure of her life, this time in New York City.  In New York City she soon established a lovely apartment in Greenwich Village and while seeking regular employment worked at the famous Gaslight Cafe where the later greats Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan were just starting their careers.  They became her friends.  She soon found the job of her lifetime as Administrative Assistant to Allistair Cooke, the Chief US Correspondent for the English newspaper the Manchester Guardian, the host of a weekly English language radio program called Notes from America, the host of the hit PBS Sunday afternoon program Omnibus and later the host of Masterpiece Theatre on PBS Television.  She worked with Alistair for seven years from 1959 thru 1966, becoming lifelong friends of both Alistair and his wife Jane always visiting with them both during every one of her frequent trips to NYC. One of the highlights of her years with Allistair occurred in 1964 when he rewarded her with a trip to Europe where she visited England Spain and France.  That began her lifelong love of Paris where she was fortunate to return for two additional trips.

Another of JoAnne's "loves" also began shortly after her arrival in New York.  Living in the apartment next to hers in the Village was Inslee Barnett with whom JoAnne cemented a lifelong friendship.  Inslee had a brother who had retired in St Croix, USVI.  She invited JoAnne to visit St Croix with her in December 1959, it was love at first sight and forever.  For the next 60 years she visited St Croix every single year, in the early years at the King Frederick and then at her beloved Cottages by the Sea, sometimes with her friend Inslee, sometimes by herself and most often with her husband Ara after their marriage.  It was on St Croix that she was the happiest and where some of her ashes will finally rest.  Her many friends from those visits, both Islanders and fellow visitors, will be deeply saddened that she will not be returning this winter.

On September 4, 1965 JoAnne and Ara Asadourian were married at St John's Church in Plattsburgh.  This was the first day of their extraordinary 56-year marriage.  Although they were classmates at Plattsburgh High School neither realized that from 1960, when Ara began law school at NYU and JoAnne was working with Allistair Cooke, they were in fact around the corner neighbors in Greenwich Village.  They met at a neighborhood laundromat in the spring of 1963 where they soon spent more time than was appropriate together given the fact Ara was supposed to be studying for the bar.

Two years later in 1965, they married in Plattsburgh and returned to NYC, a new apartment in the Village and a boundless unselfish love and devotion, a love of shared adventure that took them together all over the world and a mutual refusal to permit disability to prevent them from tasting it all.  As her husband said many times, "you do not know what it means to be loved until you've been loved by JoAnne Asadourian".

In the year following their marriage JoAnne gave birth to her beloved twin daughters Elizabeth and Amy at Mt Sinai Hospital in NYC.  The next grand adventure in JoAnne's life occurred when she and Ara decided to return to Plattsburgh for him to continue his legal career.  It was a bittersweet move for JoAnne.  She would have much preferred to remain in NYC.  She loved working for Allistair, and she loved NYC.  She soon buried her disappointment in becoming a matriculating student at SUNY Plattsburgh, majoring in French, volunteering for various good causes, and giving birth to her third beloved daughter Julie in July 1967. In her volunteer work she soon began to concentrate on the March of Dimes.  She became Chairwoman of the Clinton County March of Dimes and for many years ran incredibly successful annual drives.  In her time as Chairwoman, she led highly successful street drives, using live radio coverage on WIRY, raising in excess of $15,000 during that day year after year.

Unfortunately, JoAnne's very successful early years in Plattsburgh were plagued by ill health.  She began to suffer from growing inability to use her left extremities. After much confusion and wrong turns she was diagnosed in 1976 with MS, a progressive disease of the central nervous system.  It is in her reaction to the discovery of this disease, and the way she lived her life for the next 45 years, that demonstrated the extraordinary depth and unique quality of her courage and character.  As her disability moved from cane to walker to wheelchair, she simply found new ways to continue doing what she loved to do.  She never complained.  As she said when asked about her extraordinary courage and resilience, "you put one foot in front of the other".  She simply would not allow her disability to stop her from doing what she loved doing, her trips to St Croix, her love of foreign travel and her love of bridge, Mahjong, and poker. These continued to the last day of her life when that afternoon she played Mahjong at the Senior Center in Plattsburgh.

With all that said, the greatest joy of JoAnne's life are her three daughters and seven grandchildren.  She was the role model of all role models for them all.  JoAnne is survived by her husband, Ara Asadourian, her three daughters and their families: Elizabeth Asadourian, Maurilio Gregori Carina and Ani Gregori Asadourian of Loudonville, NY, Amy Senecal, Tim Senecal, Kelsey and Mitchell Senecal of Plattsburgh, NY and Julie Kozelian, John Kozelian, Olive, Alex and Adam Kozelian of Belmont, MA.  She is also survived by her sister Dee Dee Cox, brother-in-law David Cox of Stillwater, NY and her sister's children Todd, Emily, and Samantha.

Calling hours will be held on Saturday, October 9 ^th , 2021 from 12:00p – 2:00p with a service to follow at the R.W. Walker Funeral Home, 69 Court St. Plattsburgh, NY 12901.  For the protection of all present, the family kindly requests that masks be worn while inside.    Following the service, an outside reception will be held at Butcher Block, 15 Booth Drive in Plattsburgh.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the National MS Society, 3101 Industrial Dr Suite 210, Raleigh, NC 27609, in honor of JoAnne Asadourian.

To share a memory or condolence with the family, please visit www.rwwalkerfh.com.

Arrangements have been entrusted to the R.W. Walker Funeral Home, 69 Court Street, Plattsburgh, NY.