RIP Susan Joseph

I just received notification that Susan Joseph, a very active member of our IRL community in Maplewood and long time reader of Maplewood on Line has died.  May she rest in peace and may her memory be for a blessing.  She will live on in my fond memories of her and in the memories of so many others whose lives she touched.  As is the case in these days of imposed isolation, her funeral will be private.


from Bob Roe:   I really liked Susan and she was frequently asking me interesting questions.   I will miss her.  


Obituary from last night's Mayor's update 

"Susan B. Joseph, 61, long-time Maplewood resident, passed on April 12, 2020 at the Atrium of Livingston. Susan was born in New York, NY in June 1958. She grew up in a number of towns in New Jersey, and since 1988 enjoyed her time residing in Maplewood.

Susan graduated from Ramapo College in 1989 and from Seton Hall Law School in 1985, attending both at night while working full time. She worked as an attorney for several insurance companies focusing on regulatory matters. Susan had many interests including Yankees baseball, reading, music, photography, theater and politics. She served as a District Leader for the Maplewood County Democratic Committee from 2005-2014, and was active in numerous campaigns. She serviced her community as a member of the Transportation Advisory Committee (1999-2001) and the Affordable Housing board (2007-2010, 2012 – present). Susan was a member of the New Jersey State Bar Association for a number of years, and served as Chair of the Insurance Law Section from 1999-2000. She was a volunteer wish granter for the Starlight Children’s Foundation of New York-New Jersey-Connecticut, from 1988-2009, and granted over 70 wishes to critically, chronically and terminally ill children. She also supported the Community Food Bank of NJ and other organizations.

Susan will be missed."


There will be a virtual funeral via zoom today (April 16) at 1 pm.  


So sorry to hear this. 

What was her MOL AVATAR?


I don't know. She never told me. Jamie might be able to tell us. I can send him her email address. I sent L the link to this afternoon's virtual funeral if either or both of you would like to attend. Funeral starts at 1 pm.

I'm not positive myself.  Is there any info for the zoom funeral?


Sorry I am just seeing this now.  Funeral service was at 1 pm this afternoon via zoom.  55 persons participated.


Was this related to COVID-19?


I just learned of Susan's passing.  It is a big loss to not have her contributions anymore.  She might just be the smartest woman I have ever met though she never threw it in your face.  We loved to talk, and I don't know how we managed to do so much of it.  We would normally speak 2,5 hours on the phone, and I normally never have much to say beyond two or three minutes.  She was passionate about the Yankees, she said she liked being a part of the fans.  She knew amazing amounts of trivia (trivia to me) about the teams for decades past.  We would go to Dave Pressel's gigs in town together; initially because she wanted to hear the famous ball player play guitar (sorry, I can't remember his name; I am not a baseball fan), and then she enjoyed the music and the group  Dave brought to town as much as I enjoyed it, and she would go with me every time.  She had a favorite restaurant, Swordfish Something (corrected:  Bonefish Grill in East Brunswick), and she would always order the same thing.  She knew the menu better than the waitresses.  So that was one of the things that I appreciated about her:  she was very precise, knowledgeable, and compassionate.  She was a very fair person and a great listener.  While I get annoyed sometimes at the progressive line of thinking that to me was over the top, she was always very measured in her opinions, and she always listened politely, even if I was going over the deep end with my comments.  She was the last person I saw the last time I was in Maplewood.  I will miss you, Susan Joseph.


Would you mind sharing her MOL name?


kthnry said:

Would you mind sharing her MOL name?

 Yes please - this was her MOL community and many of us knew her here, not personally.

Who was she here?


Susan was very private about her MOL persona. I doubt she shared that information with anyone while she was alive. I just sent Jamie the email address I have for her.  Hopefully, that will help identify her MOL persona.  If it does, and that is questionable, it will be up to Jamie whether he wants to reveal it.


I feel like her MOL name should remain unknown.


yahooyahoo said:

I feel like her MOL name should remain unknown.

I was thinking the same thing.

It's hard to know what she would have wanted.  Considering what joan said about Susan keeping her MOL name private it's likely that she would want her name kept private in perpetuity.


I've tried to keep my real life identity private for personal reasons, although a few cunning posters have figured it out and asked me in person. I don't know how I would feel about my name being revealed once I shuffle off this mortal coil.  

I guess what I'm trying to say is we possibly won't learn Susan's MOL name, and we should respect that and not take it personally. 


She never posted on MOL. She just read like so many others. It’s of benefit to no one. 


I also don’t know her MOL name, but I have my suspicions, and I am going to see if the posts end at tje same time she did.


Jaytee said:

She never posted on MOL. She just read like so many others. It’s of benefit to no one. 

Susan told me that she posted on MOL and I have no reason to question that statement. It was not in character for her to read certain comments without reacting to them in person or in print. (I usually got a phone call.) I agree with the above posters who wrote that she would want her MOL identity to remain a secret while she was still alive.  In death, I honestly don't know. Reveling her MOL identity now might give more of us a sense of connection, I think she would have appreciated that motivation.  I honestly don't know if she would have agreed with it.


The only reason i don't use my name on MOL (though some know who i am irl) is to shield family members from my tendency to blab.  That reason won't go away on my death.


We can guess, and I think she would enjoy us trying to identify comments that are like her and not like her. Joanne thinks she might be the poster with the baseball avatar.  That's a really good guess; I thought years ago that that might be her, because the avatar appeared on discussions that I thought she would care about.  But then, I found some posts that didn't sound like her.  Now I think that she may have posted anonymously because she then had more freedom to play with her comments.  What's the name of the person with the baseball icon?


Copihue said:

What's the name of the person with the baseball icon?

A poster who uses a baseball signed by Tug McGraw as her avatar regularly identifies herself by name and as a real person on MOL, which I can confirm, having had the pleasure of meeting her. Her name is Wendy, however, so maybe Joanne had another baseball avatar in mind.


I know Wendy.  They are two different people.


And a Yankees fan wouldn’t use a Phillies avatar, I’m thinking. 


Heynj said:

And a Yankees fan wouldn’t use a Phillies avatar, I’m thinking. 

The fan using the Tug ball is partial to the Mets. A Phillies fan was happy to share it, and him, with her.


My guess is that on political issues she would be very careful to not be identified, but baseball not so much.  What are some MOL discussions involving the Yankees in the past year and a half where she might have posted?


I once had a long and very interesting conversation with her.  She was very smart and very kind.   And she did post on MOL on occasion.

It's been many years since we spoke - and although I could probably come up with her userid if I tried - she always wanted her privacy and that is the way it should stay.

May she rest in peace.


If the consensus is to let MOL posters remain anonymous after death, then the death notice shouldn't mention their MOL membership. We have been told that somebody we might know well (virtually) has died, but we're not being told who it is. This leaves us (or at least me) wondering if it's a specific poster with susan in her user name, but no way to find out since I don't know her IRL. And now the folks who do know her are playing some kind of guessing game. Kind of a weird and unnecessary situation.

This is a good opportunity for people to let family members know how to deal with their social media accounts after their passing. 


kthnry, 

It sounds as if you are offended by trying to find out what her MOL name was.  I've spent a few hours searching her favorite topics on MOL, reading what people have written, and deciding whether she would write something like that or not. I don't think that it is possible to find out what name she used, and I am not sure that we should find out.  Susan was a district leader for nine years, and she was a member of important committees, but her involvement in government went further back than that.  I voted on district 1, and I moved to that district in 1998.  It seems as if she was the consistent face that I saw at every election.  She was invisible, omnipresent and very nice.  Someone should have asked her if she wanted to release her name, but it wasn't done, and we will probably never know who she was on MOL.  The town has changed a great deal since I moved there in 1994, I imagine that it has continued to change since I left in 2015, and we probably will never know if she had an impact in those changes.  She had an impact in my life, I admired her for the fine qualities she chose to develop in a life that was cut too short.


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