Joan Champie
- Published: August 15, 2024
Joan Champie, trailblazing musician, pilot, mother and friend, died on Aug. 13, 2024.
Joan was born Joan Claire Browne on July 25, 1932, in Berkeley, California, to Henrietta and Clifton Browne. After high school, Joan moved to San Francisco (1950–1951), attending the University of San Francisco while living in a boarding house, practicing her oboe and saving half her income waiting tables so she could travel to Philadelphia to audition for internationally renowned oboist Marcel Tabuteau of the Curtis Institute of Music.
“I don’t want to waste Curtis’ money on a woman,” Tabuteau would say to Joan at their first meeting in 1952, encouraging her to instead study something where she could get employed as a woman “like ballet.” But he nonetheless allowed an audition. After hearing her play, Tabuteau told Joan he would take the matter up with Madame Tabuteau. Marcel Tabuteau famously accepted Joan as a private student and she studied with him from 1952 to 1954. On one occasion, after she’d done a particularly strong job in a lesson, Tabuteau allowed Joan to sweep his studio after he left.
One day, a dark-eyed cellist came into the Philadelphia music store where Joan was working. She recalled that he had a memorable, intense look about him. It came to be that on Wednesday evenings they both played in the same rehearsal orchestra and they took the same bus across town. Joan and the dark-eyed cellist (Elliott Shallin) were married in 1954. Years later, both Joan and Elliott would both remember that first encounter at the music store — even the piece of music purchased.
Joan was freelancing in Philadelphia when she got an audition with the Baltimore Symphony. She was given a challenging Richard Strauss orchestral piece to play — and she nailed it. The symphony manager fretted: “A woman, what to do?” But she was hired and thus Joan Shallin became the first female woodwind player in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Joan and Elliott also played the Santa Fe Opera during the summer when the Baltimore Symphony was out of season. They would drive from Baltimore to Santa Fe with Elliott’s cello taking up most of the room in their little Volkswagen Bug.
During their 17-year marriage, Joan and Elliott had two children, Anthony Shallin and Alexis Senger. Joan left full-time symphony work to raise the children. During this time she studied Russian (having fallen in love with the Bolshoi Ballet during her symphony days) and quickly became fluent. She continued to play periodic oboe gigs on the side and her young children sat through scores of rehearsals. (Joan also loved puns.)
After their marriage, Joan enrolled in Towson University (1969-1973) to study speech pathology. She received her master’s degree in deaf education from Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., in 1975.
Upon graduation from Gallaudet, Joan moved with her kids to El Paso, Texas, to teach preschool deaf children. She married local naturalist Clark Champie in 1977 and became Joan Champie. During this time, she hiked many peaks in the Franklin Mountains and surrounding areas with her family. Keeping her music interests alive, Joan began playing the recorder with an early music group. Joan also taught American Sign Language classes at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP).
Following their divorce in 1981, Joan moved to Austin, Texas, to work at the Texas School for the Deaf as a curriculum and deafness expert. Her involvement with music resumed and she attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music for many summers starting in 1983. Joan began playing baroque oboe with local groups in Austin and Dallas. Joan also started her own oboe reed-making company (“Champie Cane”) which operated successfully for years, keeping the connection to her beloved oboe alive even as her unforgiving oboe embouchure waned. She also took up the accordion around this time.
Joan became one of the founding volunteers at AIDS Services of Austin, starting as a speaker on AIDS issues and later helping as a personal caregiver for many gay men at a time when this was quite rare. A gray-haired heterosexual, she was an ambassador of sorts, particularly for client family members who may have been less comfortable with these issues.
In 1991, at age 59, Joan fulfilled her lifelong dream and got her pilot’s license, flying a little Cessna 150 and later a Piper, and participating in a nearby flying co-op. Famously, on her 60th birthday she went skydiving (“I had a parachute, you know,” she would say to her wary children).
Upon retirement, Joan began traveling internationally, to Europe and many times to Russia, using her Russian language skills. She also traveled to China and Nepal.
At the age of 82, Joan doubled down on her Oberlin-derived love of Ohio, moving to Yellow Springs, Ohio. Feeling immediately at home in this village, Joan dived into volunteer activities, including teaching sign language at the Yellow Springs Senior Center, playing recorder duets at a Xenia bookstore, playing her accordion at Friends Care Community and volunteering at the nearby Glen Helen Nature Preserve. She was a long-time volunteer at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, which connected her to her love of flying. Family visitors to the area always knew they’d be clocking the miles with Joan at this museum with nary a break – even on her 90th birthday.
Joan is preceded in death by her parents, Henrietta Walton and Clifton Browne; her older sister, Dorothy Black; and brother-in-law, Don Black. She is survived by her children, son Dr. Anthony Shallin, of Georgetown, Texas (daughter-in-law Deb Shallin); and daughter, Alexis Senger, of Denver, Colorado (son-in-law Joel Senger); and by her favorite (and only) grandchild, Madeleine Senger.
Joan’s children grew up with a love of nature and music, reading and education, professional endeavor and self-reliance, and of course her famous frugality. Joan maintained 40–50 year friendships with dear friends from Maryland, Alabama, Texas, Virginia and Oregon until her death. Her Yellow Springs friendships endured to the end.
Joan asked that her ashes be scattered near a small airport, consecrating her love of flying in that final act. A celebration of her life and friendships will be held in the Yellow Springs area. Never one for flowers, save for those that resolved to grow in her front yard of their own volition, any donations should be sent to Glen Helen Nature Preserve.
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Joan was one of my very best friends over the time she lived in Yellow Springs. Our mutual friend, Mary White, was responsible for connecting us. Joan asked Mary if she knew of anyone in town who might have some good recorder music and Mary directed her to me. We started playing recorder duets and kept it up even through the worst of the covid pandemic. I loved playing with Joan because we loved the same music and I had to stretch to keep up with her, plus she had the kind of wicked sense of humor that appeals to me. Even after both of us decided that we were not able to manage the amount of breath needed to play well, we continued to get together once a week to eat, drink wine, and laugh a lot. I miss her very much.