Joan Cassidy Klepp's Obituary
Joan Cassidy Klepp died May 22, 2026, in Ormond Beach, Florida, after a years-long battle with bone marrow cancer. She was 76.
Joan was born in Brooklyn, New York, the middle child of a telephone lineman and a housewife from Chicago. A census enumerator the year she was born listed her as an infant male. When the census data from 1950 came out, she and her niece, Diana, read the entry, and she said, "Maybe they told him I was a boy?" They agreed that was unlikely, and that he wasn't good at his job.
One of her grade school report cards said that she needed to work on talking less in class. Clearly, her social tendencies remained uncurbed, to our benefit. Known as Boney Joanie in high school, she went to Forest Hills Tennis Stadium to see the Beatles arrive. She said there were a lot of people, and you could sort of see some guys in the distance, and it was a letdown.
In high school, she had mononucleosis for a year, and through determination, and ingenuity from her father, John Cassidy, she didn't have to skip a grade because a friend brought a remote receiver to Island Trees High School and Joan kept up with school and answered questions through the telephone.
Though she was merely runner-up in the Miss Levittown pageant, she would go on to achieve much greater things. She took notes for a classmate in college who had to miss class often. She asked what he did, and he said he worked for American Airlines. She applied for a job and started working there at 19, where she would meet one of the first of many lifelong friends, Jack McAdams. The friends she met at American Airlines over her 30+ years remained her friends long after retirement. Many of her friends were part of a mass move of American Airlines employees from New York to Tulsa, Oklahoma. She added many people to her collection, stealing friends of friends and declaring someone to be "delightful."
She met famous people as a gate agent at LaGuardia International Airport, including Robert Redford, who she did not find to be handsome; Sonny and Cher and their baby, who were very nice even though their plane was very late; and most of all Paul Newman, who struck her so speechless with his blue eyes that another agent took over the conversation saying yes, she could tell him when his plane would be arriving, and Joan, get your jaw off the floor.
Joan told me as her cancer advanced that she had no regrets, except for marrying her first husband, who was, by all accounts, a jerk.
In some ways, she became firmer in her convictions after the trials of living with someone who thought they could best Joan Cassidy. She and her sister, Tina, learned to pilot a boat. It was in those years after her divorce that she would travel to China, Egypt and Ireland (among many other places), get her private pilot's license and attempt to fly three times with Claudette from Tulsa to West Palm Beach, complete with her dachshund Meatball, who flew with them on the back seat, without a crate and crawled around on the floor, which seems ill-advised yet daring.
She would rent and sell houses that she and her husband of nearly 40 years, Ted, had owned. She served on her condos' boards. And she earned both her bachelor's degree and MBA in Tulsa at night while working during the day. She quickly learned to play the basics of golf so she could participate on a work trip and never looked back. Her career at American Airlines spanned being a gate agent to accounting to finally IT, where she worked for Sabre Corp., the technology arm of the airline, where she handled the relationship with Dollar and Thrifty until her retirement.
She visited West Palm Beach where her sister's family lived almost every year, imparting random wisdom and similar stories, such as the fact that women are legally able to become President of the United States, how to interview for a job, and that choosing a nice man as a spouse was more important than choosing someone glitzy.
She loved, in no particular order: golfers Nancy Lopez and Jordan Spieth; musicians Harry Chapin and Billy Joel; Sergei Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, which was featured in the film Somewhere in Time; the film Empire of the Sun; the musical Les Miserables; yard sales; making stained glass; painting with watercolors; making beaded jewelry; and watching Midsomer Murders, the Big Bang Theory, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. Most of all, she loved friends and her dog.
She believed that people needed to have a passion, and at the time her passions were beading and golf. Ted asked why she had to have so many beads. And she said it was that or heroin, Ted, your choice. She delighted in many things: A recent documentary on children learning to ski in Norway called the Nor-Way; guessing whether an item would increase or decrease in value on Antiques Roadshow; making fun of a Hallmark Christmas movie about a couple that met at a cat cafe. She enjoyed the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics and became interested in curling, though she thought the Norwegian Curling uniforms were terrible and wished they would all put their jackets on.
Months ago, she thanked Diana and her sister, Tess, for tucking her into bed after a bath. And they said, well you did save us when the Galaxie started smoking. Somewhere in Tulsa in the big country, on the way to Hobby Lobby, the old '60s Ford started billowing black smoke. She said, "Girls, when I stop the car, jump out and run for your lives!" She would say, "We cheated death one more time."
She would tease her husband Ted about his devotion to large, sturdy napkins, telling him that the smaller ones were fine. After he died, she admitted to Diana that the larger Vanity Fair napkins were in fact better. Known for having an absurd level of stoicism, she powered through his death, focusing on tasks that mentally and physically exhausted Diana, and probably Joan, too. After he died, sometime around Christmas, she put a picture on the fridge of them on a trip saying that's how she wanted to remember him.
What she loved most about Ted was that things rarely bothered him. What she had a hard time with was that things rarely bothered him. The famously unflappable man sat with her after they renovated the big house in Oklahoma for a year, which they bought for the value of the land. He said, I'm glad we did it, but we're never doing this again. And they didn't. That was their house. And no other house expressed them so well.
Because Ted was of Norwegian descent, she learned a few words of Norwegian, ranging from bad teenager to swear words to snack and handkerchief. She pointed out that a Christmas Hallmark movie wasn't accurate because no one had ceilings that high in Norway, and Norwegian men didn't burst into tears over some absurd plot twist.
Diana's goal was to make her laugh, and like a standup comedian, she failed a lot of times. But she could surprise Joan with something unexpected. When Joan mentioned that the quarterly taxes had to be paid, Diana asked if they needed to pull down the drapes and make a dress to get money from Rhett Butler. That laugh was a good one.
When Diana was fussing about her insistence that the trash go out the minute she came home from work, Diana would grumble and Joan would call out: "I could change, but I won't." Joan always believed Diana had more upper body strength or home repair skills than she did. Diana was mortified when Joan, after a few months of chemo, climbed up the other side of a ladder and jammed a fan cowling over wires. Diana was like, Joan, it says don't pinch the wires. She was like we'll make it fit. And she did.
She became closer with Tina's children as they visited more, discovering that Tess could win a lot, perhaps a bit too much, at Rummikub. The ladies wished that maybe Tess didn't come by and play so much, and Joan said, but she's my ride, and her friend Casey said, that can be changed. She worked with her friend Jane on flower arrangements for Catherine's wedding and famously dickered down the price of Catherine's immaculate wedding dress for $45 on Facebook Marketplace. She taught Andrew many things like how to tell if a pearl was real.
She coached her grandchildren on all the things they needed to know, from math, to driving, to how to read a clock, to confidence across all activities. A few days before she died, she was heard giving her granddaughter advice on her move for a master's program starting with: "Triere, here's the deal..."
She never stopped making friends, and though she was heard explaining to her financial adviser once that friendship was like banking with debits and credits, that's not actually how she approached it. Of course it was best when reciprocated, but she threw herself into making my friends hers because she found them interesting, pleasant and enjoyable. Her personality was a magnet, drawing people in, whether they planned on it or not.
Diana and Joan were good at asking each other questions. Diana would have to explain double entendres, what gaslighting meant, or what a meme was, which Joan says she never really got. Over time, she texted more, attaching pictures but rarely sending any emojis, if ever. That was taking it too far.
She leaves behind the largest friend group anyone could have, people she worked with, people she played golf with, people who lived on her street or in her condo. She also leaves behind her niece, caregiver and roommate Diana Mazzella, sister Tina and brother-in-law Pete Mazzella, who she called her personal chaplain, and sister-in-law Pat Rybak-Trainor; daughter Jennifer Klepp Nikel, whom Joan would claim was most like her, even though they didn't meet until Jen was about 10; and grandchildren: Lauren, Nick, Triere and Austin. She leaves behind nieces and a nephew: Tessie, Catherine (J.D.), Andrew, Kathleen (Tony), Colleen, Kelly (Rich), Kerry (Matt) and Carole; and countless cousins.
Her parents John and Dorothy Cassidy and her brother Thomas Cassidy died many years before her. Her husband Ted Klepp died in 2022, and daughter Sharon Klepp died a decade ago. She was grieved to lose in particular two cousins over the last few years, James Horan and Terry Tresham, among many others. She bragged to her doctors that she had 75 first cousins, and a partially deaf French herding dog. Somehow these two facts were similarly important to her.
It gave Joan great satisfaction that she beat her original odds of living 1.6 years after the diagnosis of Myelodysplastic Syndrome, a bone marrow cancer, in November 2023. Tina realized that May 20, 2026, marked 10 months since she was given 3-6 months to live after her bone marrow transplant. We imagine that she's quite pleased about that. She was grateful in the course of her treatment to the staff of Florida Cancer Specialists in Ormond Beach, the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, and particularly the nurses at the infusion center at AdventHealth Daytona Beach.
In accordance with her wishes, Joan will be cremated, and a celebration of life will take place later this summer.
To honor her too-short years and vibrant life, consider making a gift in Joan's name to the American Cancer Society Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation Hope Lodge in Jacksonville, where she stayed for several months during her bone marrow transplant. There, she was surrounded by support and a calm atmosphere at no cost last summer. She gave them one of her highest compliments: "They really try." You may also consider making a gift to All Herding Breed Dog Rescue of Illinois, where her dog Fitz was rescued. In his adoption post, the ad said that he liked other dogs, which is a stretch at best and an outrageous falsehood at worst. But he is one of the most beloved creatures in her life.
https://www.cancer.org/support-programs-and-services/patient-lodging/hope-lodge/jacksonville.html
https://www.allherdingbreeddogrescue.com/
Heritage Funeral and Cremation Service is assisting the family with arrangements.
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