R. Joanne Fields Obituary (1933 - 2009)

R. Joanne Fields "Jo" Fields, 76, died at 4:15 p.m., October 15, 2009. She resided at 1011 W. Washington Street, Pontiac, Illinois. Her body has been donated for medical research. Her ashes will be inurned at a later date in the Alfred E. Fields plot in the Forrest Cemetery. A Memorial Mass will be held at 11:00 a.m., Saturday, October 24, at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Pontiac, Illinois. Monsignor Mack will officiate. After the mass, friends may visit and eat with the family at the Forrest United Methodist church in Forrest. Ms. Fields was born September 4, 1933, at Rosecroft Farm, Omega, IL, the youngest child of Alfred Edward Fields and Clara Martha (Hengesbach) Fields. She is survived by one niece in the area, Deborah Jo Honegger of Forrest, and by several other nieces and nephews in upstate Illinois, Connecticut, Minnesota, Arizona and California. Her "family" also included Bev, Hollis, and Anneke Esposito. She is also survived by her loving and steadfast calico, Ms. Savannah. She was preceded in death by two sisters, Audrey F. Honegger and Dorothy A. Beck, and three brothers, Eugene "Buck" Fields, Carl T. Fields, and Harold W. Fields. Ms. Fields graduated from Weihermiller School in southeast Livingston County and was a graduate of the first Forrest-Strawn-Wing High School class of 1950. She received a BA in English Literature and a MA in the English Language from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. She completed her course work (but not the dissertation) toward a doctorate in Linguistics at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), where she held appointments as both a Teaching Fellow and a University Scholar. While on the faculty of The University of Illinois, she attended the U of I Law School part-time. For more than 20 years, she held faculty appointments at a number of universities: Southern Illinois University, the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library Science (Urbana), the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Butler University in Indianapolis. In addition to "routine" undergraduate course in freshman composition//rhetoric and survey course in literature, she taught both undergraduate and graduate courses in her area of specialization: the History of the English language, the Development of Modern English, Contemporary English Usage, Advanced Grammar (including phonetics, phonemics, morphology, and syntax), Chaucer, and Middle English Poetry. Her most intensive area of study was late Middle English alliterative poetry. She also taught expository writing classes designed for pre-law and pre-med majors. She worked as a professional editor in text book publications, compiling teachers' manuals, and editing scholarly library journals. Since 1978, she has been a resident of Pontiac, Illinois. She was a retired employee of OSF Healthcare Systems. She worked for 22.666 years in various capacities at Saint James Hospital: unit secretary, unit secretary supervisor, staffing coordinator for Nursing Services, auditor of outpatient accounts, and registrar in ER. Her hobbies were reading, writing, Democratic politics, Indy Car racing, the LA Lakers and the Chicago Bulls, especially of the Jackson-Jordan era. In Indianapolis she was involved in parish activities of St. Thomas Aquinas Church, The Butler-Tarkington Neighborhood Association and the Marion County Democratic Party. She had been an active volunteer at St. Luke's Hospital (Duluth) and St. Vincent's Hospital (Indianapolis). She was an adult convert to Roman Catholicism. It was Ms. Fields special request that in lieu of flowers, memorials be made either to the Livingston County Humane Society, the Caring Pregnancy Center (Pontiac) or any charity of the donor's choice. Because her vision was saved by corneal transplants, Jo did not want to miss one last opportunity to appeal: "Share your Life. Share your Decision. Tell your family. Become an organ and tissue donor."