Joann Sprangers Lee

Joann Sprangers Lee died in the early morning hours of September 30, 2025 at the age of 88. Her son and niece were at her side as she passed at St. Elizabeth Hospital, after a week-long stay due to heart-related issues. About 30 minutes before she died the dim light above her bed in the hospital room got brighter. She was always a fan of the spotlight, entertaining the masses with her writings from an early age, so this was perhaps the perfect way for her to exit the “stage” which we call Earth.

Born in small town Darboy, Wisconsin, in 1937, Joann was the oldest of 12 children. Her adventurous spirit, however, wasn’t really a big fan of small town life. At the age of 25, Joann, her sister Nadine, and a friend of theirs, took off to tour the world, starting with a boat ride to Europe. Their adventures in Europe took them across many countries, as they traveled from campsite to campsite (including camping underneath the Eiffel Tower), all with the help of a guidebook titled “Europe On $5 A Day” (originally published in 1957…back when things were a lot cheaper).

After about 3 months in Europe, they returned to the United States. Joann and Nadine’s next adventure led them to San Francisco, where they lived for 3 years with various Australian roommates --- including some they had met the same day they arrived in town through an apartment rental company (“Rosalie’s Rentals”). During this time their travels also took them to St. Thomas for several months, as well as back to northern Wisconsin for a short stint.

While in San Francisco Joann met a friend who eventually moved to New York City, causing Joann to do the same (and taking Nadine along with her). In NYC they were joined by a sister of theirs (Helen), all living together in midtown Manhattan. Nadine’s encounter and brief relationship with a Frenchman at a bar, eventually led him to introduce Joann to a fellow Irish bar patron named Frank J. Lee (an Irishman in a bar…how unexpected). In keeping with her adventurous spirit, she eventually married Frank in a Darboy snowstorm in 1968. In 1974 their son, Gregory, was born.

Joann and Frank lived in NYC at Waterside Plaza during their married lives, with Joann taking annual trips to Wisconsin in the summer, often going “up north” with her sisters. In 2017 Joann returned to Darboy with Frank permanently, who was in ailing health at the time. He died a few months later at the age of 87. Joann continued to live 8 years after his death until the age of 88, enjoying being back in Wisconsin around her family in a house which she loved, and finally having the garden she could never have in New York. (Although she’d sometimes comment that it was easier to buy fresh vegetables at the farmer’s market in NYC than try to grow them.) At the age of 85 she even tried running for office to disrupt the corruption going on in small town Wisconsin.

One of the constant themes throughout Joann’s life was that of an entertainer. Her life started out on a humorous note when her parents misspelled her name on her birth certificate, which reads “Joan Sprangers”. She remained a “Joan” on her report cards throughout high school. At some point (nobody’s sure quite when), the extra “n” was added to her name.

She loved nothing more than to make people laugh, mainly through her various writings and quick wit. She loved humorous rhymes, and was skilled at writing them from an early age when she would entertain her siblings with them. While in New York City, she would make puppets and put on puppet shows for her son Greg’s birthday parties, sometimes creating puppet characters based on his friends. (She may have…allegedly…also written poems for Greg’s school assignments when rhyming was needed. At least one of these assignments was rumored to have gotten an “A”.) For Halloween in NYC she used to dress as “Super Mom”, complete with a cape and a small rolling pin on her “utility belt”.

Back around 2000 her writing interests got reignited when she got back in touch with her friend who initially caused her to move to NYC. Her friend was into writing plays, which led Joann to start writing plays and musicals in addition to her poems. Joann and her friend formed a group of fellow amateur NYC playwrights who would have actors regularly perform their plays in the community room of Joann’s apartment complex, much to her delight --- finally having an in-person audience to watch her work come to life. While working at American Express, which Joann did for many years until her mid-70s (she believed retirement would be too boring, sitting around with Frank all day), she would even write plays for her coworkers to perform and poems in Powerpoint to celebrate their birthdays and other occasions, even writing her own retirement poem for her Amex retirement party. She eventually published two books of her comedic poems, plays, and musicals.

As a mother she often took on the roles of cheerleader and protector. A prime example of this was in how she would go to bat for Greg at the insane Catholic grammar school he was enrolled in. “Mr. Hayes”, the president of the school, knew her quite well, from the endless letters she sent him regarding the shenanigans going on in the school, which “quiet” Greg would often observe and report back in great detail. (It’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for.) At one point Mr. Hayes “invited” her to his office to discuss one of her letters, to which she told him something along the lines of “I’m not going to sit in your office on the other side of your desk like a little kid who’s in trouble.” Needless to say, that office visit never happened. The school was notorious for giving students too much homework to do, which many parents had to help their kids with until the wee small hours of the night. While many parents didn’t create a fuss about it, being too chicken to say anything, Joann was at the forefront of the homework battle and various other nonsense going on at the school, like verbally abusive nuns, ridiculous entire class punishment assignments, and badly mimeographed assignments that could barely be read. Certain teachers would require young grammar school children to carry heavy text books back and forth to school along the streets of NYC, where most kids walked home. Among her many talents, Joann inherited the Sprangers gene of being quite innovative and creative, and turned an old luggage style cart into a rolling backpack for Greg to roll his heavy textbooks back and forth to school with. On a related creative note, when she would go shopping along the streets of NYC to buy groceries, she took red (her favorite color) wire baskets originally meant to hang underneath shelves and would attach them to the outside of her red shopping cart to create extra storage. Nobody else on the streets of NYC was that innovative. (Of course, occasionally the cart would tip over if the contents of the cart was lighter than the baskets attached to the outside of it, but innovation can’t always be perfect.)

Joann had issues with her heart for much of her adult life, including a valve replacement and two different pacemakers. Despite all the issues with her heart, it never stopped her from living a full life until the age of 88. She would take frequent trips to visit her son Greg as he moved around the country (it must be genetic), where they would have great fun going on road trips together, viewing the scenery of places likes New Hampshire, Florida, Virginia, West Virginia, New Mexico, California, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Arizona. On one particular occasion, she had just had her atrial fibrillations “zapped” (as she liked to call it) with electric charges at the hospital a day before jumping on a plane to fly out west and tour Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho with her son. Even she remarked how crazy it was to do at the time, but that’s how she rolled. There was no stopping her when she was on a mission.

She was a fighter with a strong life force (a former coworker of hers described her as a “spitfire”), even fighting to stay alive that final week in the hospital. While her body was weak, her spirit remained strong in her final days. Her loving mother energy was there until the end, even asking Greg why he was crying while watching his mother in her hospital bed, knowing that the end was near for her. Joann was memorable to everyone she came into contact with, and only in her death did the number of people she impacted positively become evident. She was very spiritual and a strong believer in reincarnation from early on in her life (a belief that her son adopted), and with that was very philosophical about this whole thing we call "life" here on Earth. She did not want anyone to be sad when she passed (easier said than done for those of us she left behind), as she believed we would all meet each other on the other side again in the future. To quote a line from one of her poems about her beloved (and enormous) red glassware collection, "Soon we shall meet again, so shedding tears on Earth, is just a weird tradition for we'll always have rebirth."

Her humor and zest for life will likely be the lasting impression she leaves on all those who knew her (and perhaps some of those who didn’t through her writings):"When I rewind and view my days in snippets here and there,

What tops the list are all the laughs that I've been blessed to share.

I hope for laughs in heaven with the funny folks I've known.

If you won't be in heaven, leave me the hell alone."

She will be greatly missed.Joann is survived by her son Greg and her 11 siblings --- Roger, Nadine, Ann, Paul, Jim, Barbara, Helen, Dave, Greg, Marian, and Ron. She was preceded in death by her husband Frank and her parents Annabel Birling Sprangers and Andrew Sprangers.

Since Joann mentioned several times that she didn’t want a funeral, a “Celebration of Life” event in her honor is planned for the spring/summer of 2026.