CHAPMAN, Maine — JoAnne Wachholz Putnam, PhD, passed away peacefully at home on September 26, 2017. She was born in Monterey, California, on November 19, 1948 to Lt. Colonel Paul and Leone (Jenson) Wachholz. Her father was an intelligence officer and linguist assigned to the military attaché in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where JoAnne spent her early years. Her family lived in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and Wisconsin, before settling in Alexandria, Virginia, where Paul worked at the Pentagon and Leone worked as a congressional aide on Capitol Hill. JoAnne married David Putnam on the rocky promontory of Bear Rocks on Dolly Sods, West Virginia, in August 1978.
JoAnne was expected to marry and become a homemaker, but she had other plans. She earned two Masters Degrees (George Washington University and West Virginia University) and a PhD in education psychology from the University of Minnesota. She taught at the University of Maine at Farmington, and served as chair of the Special Education Department. She then moved to Missoula, Montana, to teach at the University of Montana. While there, she taught courses at the Salish-Kootenai (Flathead) tribal college in Pablo, and the Blackfoot Tribal College in Browning, MT. In the early 90’s, JoAnne accepted a position to teach at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where she coordinated a state-wide distance education program. She visited small villages in the Aleutian Island chain, the North Slope, the interior, and Southeast of Alaska. This involved many hours flying with bush pilots and sleeping on village schoolroom floors. In 1995, she returned to Maine to serve as Dean of the School of Professional Programs at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. In 1997, taking a leave of absence from U Maine Presque Isle, she moved to Barrow, Alaska to start an Iñupiat teacher education program at Ilisagvik College. The following year, she returned to the Dean position at U Maine Presque Isle and rejoined the faculty, where she taught until retirement in 2015.
JoAnne was an adventurer. In the summer of 1987, she left her two young sons in the care of her husband and traveled to China to teach at Beijing Normal University. This was at a time when only government officials had automobiles. Plans to return to China in June 1989 were preempted by the uprising at Tiananmen Square. JoAnne spoke Portuguese and Spanish in addition to English, and always yearned to return to Brazil.
JoAnne cared deeply about people with special needs and dedicated her life and career to helping empower them. She was a strong proponent of classroom inclusion for all students. She was an accomplished scholar who wrote several books and edited several others on the topic of cooperative learning and inclusion as a strategy to help all students learn. During her tenure, JoAnne published many research articles in professional journals on the topic of cooperative learning.
She also collaborated with her husband, David, and Bernard and Ramona Jerome of Gesgapegiag, Quebec, to write a curriculum, Plamu Wesit (the Leaping Salmon), for the Gesgapegiag First Nation School. She was particularly committed to Native American, Native Alaskan, Native Hawaiian, and First Nations peoples. She forged lasting friendships among the Native communities and shared the belief that we are all children of Mother Earth.
JoAnne loved animals and worshiped life in all things. She knew and protected every spider in the house, and only served an eviction notice on one, a particularly large and aggressive wolf spider. At one time, her free-range household included a fractious husband, two boys, three dogs, five cats, two ferrets, a six-foot iguana, and a three legged box turtle – as well as a number of caged lizards, hermit crabs, fish, snakes, amphibians, and various birds.
Her mother was an ethnic Norwegian from Scandanavia, Wisconsin, and her father a German from Westfield, Wisconsin. She traveled to the Jenson family home in Kongsburg and Telemark, Norway, and visited the Sami Institute and Reindeer School in Kautokeino, on the Arctic plateau.
JoAnne was predeceased by her parents and brother, Douglas Wachholz (Wan), of Reno, Nevada. She is survived by her husband David, and sons Aaron Putnam (Katherine Allen) of Orono, Maine, Ian Putnam of Juneau, Alaska, and sister, Mary McNab (James) of Charleston, South Carolina, nieces and nephews. She asked to thank her many friends in communities scattered across the globe, particularly the Sanipass clan (Mary, Donna, David, Marline, Roldena, Cheryl, Tania, Jerich, et al.), Bernard and Ramona Jerome, Roger, Nicholas, and Waupi Paul, David and Imelda Perley, Solomon “Rocky” Bear, Deborah Bear, Pat Paul, Richard Silliboy, Dan and Caroline Ennis, Elsie Itta (Barrow, Alaska) and so many others for enriching her life.
In lieu of flowers or donations, please engage in acts of kindness and compassion by helping other people and animals in JoAnne’s memory. A celebration of JoAnne’s life is being planned for late October, at the Presque Isle Congregational Church, 27 Church Street, followed by a buffet luncheon at Cafe Sorpreso, 415 Main Street, Presque Isle. All friends are invited. Memories and condolences may be shared with the family at www.duncan-graves.com
