A Sense of Colorful Well-Being: Joan Marie Reiter

The owner of that big, beautiful smile was Joan Marie Reiter (1929-2017). I found her photo album, dated 1948, at an antique store in the Baltimore neighborhood of Hampden in January 2018. I could afford to purchase only the pages which contained photographs of her and members of her immediate family and a couple of loose ones stuck inside.

Joan was born in the Bronx to Robert Francis Reiter, Sr. (1883-1964) and Mae Margaret Terrell (1894-1962). She graduated from Metuchen High School in Metuchen, NJ in 1947. She was a member of the “Twirlers” who were described in the 1947 yearbook, the Blue Letter, as “high school girls in blue and white costumes” who “lined the halves at football games and generally gave to the school games a sense of colorful well being.” She was also a member of The Middionettes Club which “was organized not as a ‘good-time’ club but with the idea of being generally helpful . . . making favors, tray covers, etc., for hospital trays and lending a helpful hand wherever it is most needed.

Here is Joan posing with a 1941 Chevrolet Master Delux:

Below is Joan and her ’47 classmate Ellen Ruth Christophersen:

Here is a photo of the previously mentioned Ellen Christophersen, classmate Elizabeth Anne Coffey (1930-2000), and Roger J. Canary III (1929-1974).

Below are photos from a pages in Joan’s album. First up are Joan’s mom, Mary Margaret Terrell (1894-1962) and Joan’s brother, William John Reiter, Sr. (1920-2002) who was known as Billy. Billy was a welder.

Below are three photographs of Joan’s other brother, Robert Francis Reiter, Jr. (1922-1982), also known as Bobby, who was an accountant. I don’t know who the women are or the identity of the photobomber.

Finally, a photograph of Joan’s dad, Robert Frank Reiter (1883-1964)

Joan married Joseph Michael Dalton (1925-1996) in 1954 and, after he died, Francis Michael Mirkay, Jr. (1938-2003). All three of them are buried in Potomac, MD.