Joan Joffe Hall

Joan Joffe Hall (1936-2013) Joan Joffe Hall died peacefully at home Monday night, September 16, after a 17 year battle with cancer. In her last days she was attended by her husband and sons and loving friends. Dr. Hall was the first woman hired for a tenure-track position in the English Dept. of the University of Connecticut, in 1963. She helped found the women's studies program at UConn, as well as the creative writing and film study programs. A tireless advocate of women's rights and gender equity, she was also a gifted poet. "She was brilliant, analytical, with a highly developed ironic style I found compelling," says her long-time colleague Dr. Roger Wilkenfeld,. "We began each morning by challenging each other with quotations from poems. She was terrific at this game." "From the beginning she knew that as the first woman in our Department she was going to be 'invited' to serve as the great role-model for our female students, a role she unblinkingly accepted." Wilkenfeld was awed by "the endless stream of students who wanted her advice and counsel on literary, but also personal issues." "She was critical but she wasn't arbitrary. She was tough but she wasn't severe; she was ironic but she wasn't acidic; she was thoughtfully engaged but she wasn't overly sentimental. She was a woman for all seasons." Among the writers she helped launch are Bobbie Ann Mason, Roger Rawlings, Wally Lamb, Ann Beatie, Caragh O'Brien, and poets Jon Anderson and John Surowiecki. Countless other students have carried her influence into their lives. Her poems appear in prestigious journals and half a dozen volumes, the most recent being In Angled Light, published by Antrim House in 2004. Over the years she produced 21 chapbooks that are beloved by friends and family. Her poems are spare, the wit never forced, their meaning drawn from ordinary life. The poems are "sharp and edgy, with unflinching perceptions and witty surprises flying at you," in the words of Bobbie Ann Mason. Poet Wendell Berry says of Hall's book Romance and Capitalism at the Movies (1985, Alice James Press) "I relish that the poems are spoken by a woman who is about to do something; tend the garden, go off to work, care for a child." Born in Brooklyn, NY, to Louis and Leah Joffe, Joan wrote her first poem at the age of four, entered Vassar College at sixteen, and received her PhD from Stanford at 21. She was married from 1959 to 1978 to James Baker Hall, with whom she had two sons. She remarried in 1980, to David Edward Morse, a writer and human rights advocate who had three sons of his own: Scott, Bob, and Eli. Married for 32 years, Hall and Morse shared a blended family totaling five sons and eight grandchildren. The couple edited each other's work avidly, read books together, and engaged in constant word play. They have been active in Storrs Friends Meeting (Quakers) for the past two decades. Joan is survived by her husband, David, who tended her until the end, and her two sons, Matthew and Michael. Matthew Hall currently teaches law at the University of Mississippi, where he is associate dean of the law school, and is married to Melissa Booth Hall; they have two children, Robert and Daniel. Michael Hall orchestrates digital marketing in San Francisco, where he lives with his wife, Lisa, and their daughter, Evie. The memorial service will be held Oct. 5, at 11 a.m. at Storrs Friends Meeting House, 57 Hunting Lodge Rd., Mansfield 06268. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the UConn Foundation, Inc., earmarked for "Joan Joffe Hall Scholarship Fund." For an online memorial guestbook, please visit www.potterfuneralhome.com .