“I did the best I could for you Barbara – I gave you a Jewish mother”. That was the line my (often hilarious) father said about my mother, Joan Faye Bogosian. I’m unsure I know what a Jewish mother is supposed to be, but this Jewish mother was kind, caring, relentlessly supportive and loved me unconditionally from when I was a child into adulthood. Just one example: my childhood friend wore the same ring my mother did when she got married, because my mother (and her marriage to my father) was her ideal of harmony and happiness. I am the lucky byproduct of that.

Joan Faye Bogosian was born in Detroit in 1934 to Jewish parents who emigrated from Russia and England and who came, like many others, to work in the automobile factories in Detroit. Eventually, my grandfather, Samuel Konop, bought a small laundry in Harper Park, Michigan and my grandmother (Shirley Potash, nee Shirley Konop, nee Shirley Coleman), helped run it. My mother was the first person in her family to go to college – The University of Michigan, but was asked to leave after her freshman year (“I was just having too much fun”). She transferred to Wayne State University where she worked in the law library at nights. It was there that she met my father -- a night law student.

My mother became a middle school teacher in the Detroit area and was the first teacher in her school district allowed to teach when “showing” while pregnant in 1960. She quit working outside the home when I was born, but soon thereafter, she and my father bought a small horse farm in Rochester, Michigan. (My grandfather died when he was 14 and my father went to work full-time to help support his family; put himself through college and law school and fell in love with horses at age 30.) My parents raced under the name “Winmead Farm” and their beloved horses did well enough to sustain the operation for many years. My mother was a community activist, tennis player and most important, a good friend to many. My younger brother, James Nicholas Bogosian, lost his life in 1982 while attending the Virginia Military Institute and while a passenger in a car wreck.

My mother became a real estate agent later in life, moved to Ashburn, Virginia, with my father in 1995 and continued to work in the real estate industry after my father died in 2006. She moved to Charlottesville in January of this year and entered hospice four days before she died.

Joan Faye Bogosian is survived by her daughter, Barbara Notar (nee Barbara Bogosian)(John “Jack” Roberts), her cherished grandchildren Lauren E. Notar (Peter Ott) and John (“Jack”) Notar, as well as her beloved cousins, nieces and nephews in California and Michigan. In lieu of a service or flowers, donations can be made on her behalf to the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, www.trfinc.org.

Compassionate Cremation Services of Ruckersville, Virginia is honored to serve to the family.