My mother,
Joan Warnow-Blewett,
born Joan Carol Nelson on December 11, 1931, died
Tuesday May 30, 2006, in a hospice (the Bruns
House) in Alamo, California. She was
a brave woman with an incredible ability to believe in
everlasting love. She had a tremendous career, and
was rightfully proud of her accomplishments as
an archivist (she specialized
in 20th Century physics, and was elected a Fellow of the
Society of American Archivists). She was also proud
of her children and grandchildren. She died, surrounded
by all her children, her son-in-law, and with her husband Martin Klein
holding her hand.
They had been
married for less than
a year. He was the love of her life.
We were lucky to be with her, all of us. I wish only that
she had lived longer, and that we had all gotten to know
her better.
A memorial for my mother was held on June 11, 2006, in
Carolina Meadows (Chapel Hill, North Carolina) where she
lived with Martin
Klein until her death.
Here are some of the
statements sent for the memorial, by friends and colleagues.
(Should you wish to send your own, please do; I will
update this file as they come in.)
Daughters
I have two daughters. My elder,
Kristin Kane, is a
choral conductor and DMA student in Music at Cornell.
She conducted
the group Ars Cantus (a women only chorus in San Francisco),
and they have a CD of the Renaissance
composer Thomas Tallis, called "Rehearings".
You can get her CD
on Amazon,
here.
On
Feb 28, 2006, she conducted
Elena,
by Franceso Cavalli, in an amazing performance (you can see
the poster for her performance below).
Kristin had a baby boy,
Wesley Tallis Adams, on August 5, 2006.
My younger daughter, Menaka Sampath,
is a junior at Penn.
She's a fashionista, but is more generally amazingly artistic.
She's deeply interested in politics and world events, and no doubt will
someday surprise us all.
Click here for more photos of Menaka.
Other family
My brother, Paul Warnow, lives in San Francisco and maintains
a political web page,
Progressive-Alliance.org.
My sister,
Kimmen Sjölander
also works in computational biology.
My father, Morton Warnow,
died on March 3, 2006.
Here is the obituary I wrote for the New York Times.
Morton Charles Warnow, 80, of Danbury Connecticut,
died Friday, March 3, 2006, of natural causes.
Morton served in World War II, and wrote a novel
("Forced March") based upon
his experiences as a Jewish POW.
He was an inventor, most recently of devices
to assist the deaf.
Morton was the son of Lucky Strike bandleader
Mark Warnow
and Sylvia Rappaport Warnow. He had been married
twice, and
had three children by his first marriage.
My family included some musicians. My grandfather,
Mark Warnow,
conducted the Lucky Strike Hit Parade on the radio
(see this YouTube page
for him conducting Frank Sinatra),
while his brother,
Raymond Scott,
although also a conductor, was better known for his
unusual compositions.
Here's a photo of me with my cousins
Carolyn Tomo and Susan Gilmore.
Photos:
The photo on the left is of
me with my cousins
Carolyn Tomo and Susan Gilmore, celebrating our
birthdays together.
The middle one is of my daughter Menaka Sampath.
The one on the right is at the wedding of my
mother and Marty Klein in the summer of 2005;
my sister Kimmen is on the left.
For some recent photos of me (dated May 3, 2008),
click here,
here,
here,
here, and
here.
And here is a poster of the opera that
my daughter (Kristin) conducted in
February 2006!
