Joanne Lydia Horvath was born during the Great Depression. Life was never easy in those days. She learned to sew and made many of her own clothes. She survived three husbands, a plethora of jobs and lifestyles, and came out the other side with four sons whom she adored until the day she died.
She and her family came to Coronado in 1969, two days after the bridge had opened and the car-carrying ferryboats ceased their operation. They resided here for nearly half a century. Joanne will be remembered as a woman who always put family/children first. She gave everything, and then more, to make sure they had what they needed. There was never a shortage of love between Joanne and her sons.
Born in Roanoke, VA, Dec. 14, 1935 as Joanne Lydia White, she was the oldest of four siblings (Judy, Jimmy and Jenoese). Her father was James “Bill” Aaron White. He was 35 when he married her mother, Lydia Ringsmuth-White. She was only 18.
“I was brought up in a Christian household,” Joanne would say. “My mother was a beautiful Christian woman, and read her Bible. My father was a deacon at our local church, but at home, outward religious behavior was pretty much limited to Blessings over the food. He was so harsh and unlovable as a father, but on Sundays, as a church deacon, he was always on his best behavior.”
She had vivid memories of her father as traveling salesman, selling anything and everything to provide for his wife and children. He sold appliances and washing machines. He knew how to talk to people. He held a series of jobs. He purchased run down houses and stores, which he would restore and sell. Joanne, even as early as eight years of age, helped him paint the lower areas of the houses — steps, baseboards, and anything that required her father to bend over. Being the oldest child, she was often a useful tool in her father’s projects.
Her father’s family hailed from England two generations earlier. Sadly, she remembered her father as not a particularly nice man. Joanne’s mother, Lydia Ringsmuth-White, boasted of a Czechoslovakian background. Her father brought his family here seeking a better life for them.
Joanne grew up in Virginia and North Carolina, and spent a year in Massachusetts. She was in the sixth grade in Massachusetts, visiting her cousins, when her mother decided to leave her father. “Mother and my siblings were in Roanoke, VA when she made that life changing decision to leave dad.”
Her mother, and Joanne’s three siblings, sat in a dark and cold railway station waiting for a train to join her in Massachusetts. All this had to be done before her father came home from work. They were literally escaping a world of cruelty and oppression, and entering a new chapter in their lives.
“Mother had two brothers in Massachusetts who were preachers. After ten months of separation, Dad begged her to come back. He assured her he had changed, said he had found the Lord, so she moved back. Within a day or two she knew it wasn’t true. She left him again. She gathered us all up and we took another train to Florida, where two of her sisters lived.”
Being the oldest child, Joanne became a surrogate mother to the rest of the children. She had a lot on her shoulders, and was expected to be the divine one to help her mother through life.
“She considered me more of a partner than a daughter,” recalled Joanne. “And I took that role very seriously, much to the chagrin of my siblings.” All of that gave Joanne a real heads up for the job ahead of raising her own four sons, often as a single mom.
After she left her husband, Joanne’s mother worked a variety of jobs out of sheer necessity. She received no financial assistance from her ex-husband. She was a nurse practitioner at a hospital for a while. When she worked, usually the night shift, Joanne took over all motherly duties. To enhance a then-pitiful income, she worked day jobs as well.
“My mother worked so hard that at night, she would fall asleep sitting in her chair, reading her Bible. I would carefully close it and put it on the table, and then help her to bed. Funny, the things you remember.”
Sadly, her siblings grew to resent her for taking over their mother’s duties. “I was a staunch believer in my mother, and what she needed. They had to do what I said because I was determined not to let our mother down. It made for a rough and emotional road at times.”
Despite the hardships, the constant worrying about where the next meal would come from, Joanne remembered little things that made her smile to her dying day. “Mother had a unique laugh. It was a pure, rippling, vocal joy. I could never laugh like that, but it was soft, a jiggle, and of course, music to our ears. It always made me smile when I heard mother laugh.”
Joanne graduated from Fort Meyers High School in 1953, in Fort Meyers, Florida. She graduated in 1955 from Averett College for Girls in Danville, VA, where she studied secretarial skills, learning shorthand, English, bookkeeping and typing, figuring that would give her some job options.
She had to be able to type and take shorthand at 100 words per minute before she could graduate. Keep in mind, this wasn’t on a computer keyboard, or an electric typewriter. It was the old manual typewriters, where you had to fling the carriage back at the end of every sentence, and your fingers had to be strong to depress the keys.
She remembered and recited the drill her typing teachers forced students to learn in those days, a saying that utilized most of the keys. Laughingly, she recited it to perfection – “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.” She then admitted she hadn’t thought of that in decades.
Unable to hold on to a secretarial job, Joanne was confronted by her aunt, who encouraged her to go to nursing school. There were other nurses in her family. “I did enjoy nursing,” Joanne said. “However, I got so sick. I had an awful gag reflex, and found myself gagging and throwing up around all my patients. I just couldn’t do it any longer.”
Eventually, she found a job as a dermatology assistant in Orlando, FL, where she learned to identify and treat cancer. She specialized in curettage and desiccation — skin cancer treatment designed to remove basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas. She doubled as an x-ray technician.
Joanne was an extremely attractive young woman, but being in an all-girls college, she had little exposure to men. It was while working in Florida she met her first husband, Joe Pre-Genzer. He was an older man by ten years. They married in 1956, and had one child, Jeff, the following year. They were only married 18 months. “He was strict, older, and hard to deal with,” she would later admit. “We were in different leagues and just didn’t mesh well.”
So, she loaded up her baby boy and took a Greyhound Bus to Tucson, Arizona, where she had friends. She worked at the University of Arizona doing secretarial work to help provide for her young son.
After three years living in Tucson, Joanne was blessed with her second son, Martin, who went on to become a highly decorated US Army soldier later in his life. “Because I had Marty out of wedlock, I had to quit my job. We survived on welfare food. It was a bad time but we somehow survived. Back then, in the ‘60s, a stigma went along with fatherless children. I was looked upon as, ‘She got in trouble.’”
Despite her apparent inability to find “Mister Right,” Joanne continued to devote everything to her children, sewing their own clothes on an old Pebble sewing machine and working whatever jobs she could to keep food on the table.
Eventually Joanne met the man she was meant to be with, Skip Horvath. She had her next two sons with him, Kirk and Michael. They moved to San Diego in search of work and eventually to Coronado. That was 1969, right after the bridge had opened. In her own words, “Meeting Skip was the turning point in my life. I loved him dearly.”
Skip died in 1984 at the age of 51. The family spread his ashes on the 8th hole of his favorite golf course, at night, when no one was around. “That was his favorite hole,” said Joanne, blushingly.
Like her own mother, Joanne was willing to do everything and anything to provide for her children. Throughout her long life she was a medical assistant, an x-ray technician, secretary, Amway distributor, a personal color analysis consultant, distributer of Mary Kay products, and worked as a realtor for Lee Mather Realtors.
Two years after Skip died, Joanne realized she had to go to work. She landed a position at Lee Mather Realtors. “Lee Mather and Company took very good care of me. They made it possible for me to go back to school and get my real estate license, and I began to sell real estate, which gave me a financial foot up on what had previously been an unstable financial life.”
In 2001 Joanne met and married Carl Bernick. “We were together for 20 years, until his death in 2020,” she said. “Carl was a very loving, smart and funny man. I treasured my time with him.” They enjoyed their life together, traveling and living the dream in Imperial Beach.
Joanne loved going to church and inviting others to attend. When she first came to San Diego, she attended College Avenue Baptist Church, and then Horizon Christian Fellowship. In Coronado she attended the Methodist and Coronado Community Churches, and then the Ocean View Baptist Church of Nester.
Joanne loved music. She played piano and sang in many church choirs until her arthritic fingers could no longer play the ivories. Joanne, as much as was humanly possible, lived by the word of God and tried very hard to teach that to her children.
“Knowing the Lord kept me on my toes, or on my knees,” she laughed. She had always been a romantic and a lover of life. But she kept up her relationship with the Lord throughout her long life. “I’ve had a beautiful, if not accountable, relationship with God. Even today, when I walk Rusty, my dog, I talk to God. My mother taught me how to love God and, well, I just love him very much, and that’s all there is to that,” she said, just a few months before she died.
She survived three husbands, four sons, and had to work every step of the way. Her legacy is her family. She was thrilled to have lived long enough to see her children become healthy, successful, happy, and good Christian men. She would often laugh and say, “Well, I guess I couldn’t have been that bad a mother. I raised four sons, and none of them ever went to jail.”
She will be remembered as a woman who put family first, children first. Gave everything, and then more, to make sure they had what they needed. There was never a lack of love between Joanne and her sons. As much as is humanly possible she lived by the word of God, and tried to teach that to her children. Her legacy will be her children and their children, but also the many people who knew her throughout her long life.
Joanne Horvath passed peacefully July 7, 2024. She was 88 years old. She is survived by her sons Jeff (Katie) of Hawthorn Woods, IL; Marty (Claudia) of Coronado; Kirk of Coronado; and Michael (Katie) of San Diego.
A great mother and grandmother, Joanne is also survived by two grandchildren — Kara, continuing the tradition of nursing in Chicago, and William, active duty in the US Coast Guard.
Joanne’s final few years were spent in Coronado, where she enjoyed an independent lifestyle with her corgis and help from her son Kirk, who stepped in and looked after her morning, noon and night.
A memorial service will take place at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, August 17, 11 a.m. The church is located at 700 D Avenue, Coronado, CA. It will be followed by a Celebration of Life Reception at the Coronado Golf Course (Fairway Patio), 1-4 p.m.
The family requests donations be made, “In Memory of Joanne Horvath,” to Queen’s Best Stumpy Dog Rescue, 4821 Lankershim Blvd. #F372, North Hollywood, CA 91601.
