Joan (nee Baionno) Perna

PERNAJoan (nee Baionno), age 77, on December 6, 2020 of Media, formerly of Springfield, PA.Survived by her husband of 57 years, Joseph A. Perna IV, her children Debby A. (Larry) Basher, Joseph A. V, Lisa A. (Patrick) Keenan and Matthew (Catherine), her 5 Grandchildren; L.J., Alyssa, Michael, Cassie, and Lisette, brother-in-law Robert “Bob” Ficco (late Veronica) and sister-in-law Dorothy (late Anthony Baionno).Joan was born in the Overbrook section of West Philly. She attended Our Lady of Lourdes grade school and graduated from West Catholic Girls’ High School in 1961. While still in school, at 15 years old, Joan would meet the young man with whom she would spend the next 62 years of her life. They say it was love at first sight; well, at the very least it was that for Joe Perna IV, who could not take his eyes off of the beautiful, voluptuous young woman who would become his wife.It was a fairy tale in the making. Family lore has it that when Joe’s mother was pregnant with him, she was fitted for a dress by Joan’s mother. The two women wouldn’t meet again until 17 years later when the families were brought together by the marriage of Joan’s sister. It was by fate that Joe had been invited to the wedding. Sometime before then, Joe’s widowed grandmother married the grandfather of Joan’s new brother-in-law. Joe’s new grandfather, fond of him, requested that Joe attend the wedding. On that day, the love of family elders, already bound by the sanctity of marriage, and the love of two young ones, freshly bound, brought together two strangers whose love had yet to bloom, but, when it had, would endure eternally.Joan and Joe became inseparable. Proud of his new high school ring, Joe insisted before meeting Joan that he would never give it to another. Not three weeks after he first put it on, he offered it to the young woman who forever stole his heart and mind.A few years later, they were married. Within a year, Joan gave birth to their first child, Debby. Less than one year later, she became pregnant with their second, Joseph V. With a burgeoning family, it was time they moved from the house of Joe’s parents in Havertown and into their own. So, Joan and Joe moved into a twin on Oakley Road in Upper Darby; there the eventuality of Joan’s legacy as a meticulous homemaker and devoted caretaker had taken root.Eight years later and two more children, Lisa and Matthew, Joan and Joe’s family had outgrown the Oakley Road house. It was on to Springfield into a four-bedroom house that Joe helped to build while working for his uncle’s company. With the four children in tow, Debby (9), Joseph V (7), Lisa (4), and Matthew (10 mos.), Joan and Joe established themselves in the house that would be their home for the next 45 years.And home it was. Family was the center of Joan’s life and the dinner table was the center of her family. A rectangular wood table located in the eat-in kitchen is where she, Joe, and the four children gathered every evening for a home-cooked meal. When friends or extended family would come by, chairs were brought in from the dining room and squeezed around the table. With Joan at one end, Joe at the other, and two kids on either side, the six shared innumerable meals that she prepared with the sole purpose of pleasing her family. Spaghetti and gravy (yes, it was called gravy in that house), meatballs (first fried then cooked in the gravy), chicken and rice, meatloaf, ‘shit-on-a-shingle,’ cheesesteaks, chicken soup, flounder, pizza from scratch (her white pizza was a delicacy) and a salad for Joe that she made every night, with the same ingredients, same oil and vinegar dressing, same seasoning. Joan’s meals were an expression of her devotion and love for her children and husband. And after eachmeal, after all that cutting and dicing, mixing and stirring, Joan would clean her kitchen to a state that made one wonder had anything ever been prepared there. It was but another expression of her character that scrupulous care of her home was necessary for her family to thrive.There were times of course, as with most closely-knit families, when tempers might get the best of one or two and a tater-tot fight would break out at the dinner table. She was ‘Sigi’ after all, proud of her Sicilian roots and quick to remind all of that fact if they questioned her opinions. But those moments subsided as quickly as they erupted. And Joan’s sweetness could be indulged with a dessert such as cheesecake (made with cream cheese, not ricotta, she insisted), or a cannoli, or a sampling of various cookies to dunk in her after-dinner coffee. Always self-effacing, Joan’s goodness radiated from that table and every table where she shared a meal with others. Many memories were forged in the kitchens and dining rooms of the extended family: at her mother and father’s, brother’s and sister’s, in-laws’, uncle’s, and cousins’ houses. So much of her time was given to relationships built around the simple pleasures gained from talking and eating, and sometimes arguing, with the ones she loved. A small woman with great stature, she often joked that her curly, voluminous hair put her over the five-foot mark. Her big, beautiful brown eyes softened the Sigi-fueled judgements which she freely made, so often that Joan’s father-in-law made a shingle for her to hang in the kitchen, her workshop. It read “Joan Perna: Doctor, Psychologist, Teacher, Mediator, Wife, Mother.” He did it teasingly with loving humor but in absolute recognition that Joan was so much to the one’s she loved. As the family expanded while her children formed families of their own, so too her capacity for caring for others. Her children’s partners were loved as if her own; and Joan’s five grandchildren became a source of joy and celebration.Spending most of her career as Homemaker Extraordinaire, Joan did carry her big heart outside the house at various times to share with others. She worked at Melmark, a school for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities, caring for the children at the school. She and a friend formed a cleaning business, caring for others’ homes as well as she did her own. She was a caretaker to her core. She gave of herself all that she had for as long as she could.After 45 years in the Springfield house at 823 Evans Road, Joan and Joe moved to Media with their daughter Lisa’s family. After 54 years of caring for others, it was her turn to be cared for.The Family asks that in Joan’s honor, donations be made to one or all of the following foundations: the GCE Foundation, dedicated to research on Diabetes, Obesity and Cardiovascular diseases, the American Liver Foundation, whose mission is to promote education, advocacy, support services and research for the prevention, treatment and cure of liver disease, and the Parkinson’s Foundation, dedicated to making life better for people with Parkinson’s disease by improving care and advancing research toward a cure.http://www.gcefoundation.org/donation/ https://liverfoundation.org/for-patients/how-you-can-help/ https://www.parkinson.org/ways-to-giveDue to Covid-19 restrictions services are private