Tribute to Joann

Joann Mary Gariety Shipley, 67, a Fairfax County public school educator who retired in 2001 as the librarian of Franconia Elementary School in Alexandria died April 5, 2012 at her residence in Haymarket, Virginia. She had acute lymphocytic leukemia.

Joann Gariety Shipley was born June 5, 1944, and raised on a farm near Russia, Ohio. She was a 1962 graduate of Russia Public School and a 1966 graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, with a degree in elementary education. She did graduate studies in library science at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. After graduation in 1966, she began her teaching career at Huffman Elementary School in Dayton, Ohio. From 1968 until 1974 she taught for the Department of Defense Overseas School System spending two years teaching first grade on Okinawa at Sukiran Elementary and four years in Germany at Frankfurt Elementary No. 1. While teaching in Frankfurt, she met and married her husband, Jack Shipley, in April 1974.

After returning to the States in 1974, she resided in Sierra Vista, Arizona, where she was the school librarian at Carmichael Elementary. In 1979 she moved to Virginia and was a housewife and mother to her two daughters until she accepted a position in 1984 at George Mason University’s Fenwick library. She became the school librarian at Franconia Elementary in 1987. After retiring in 2001 she moved to the Piedmont community in Haymarket, VA, where she pursued her three passions—traveling, gardening and reading.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Leo A. and Theresa (Dapore) Gariety, and two brothers, Paul and Harold Gariety.

She is survived by her husband of the home; her daughter and son-in-law, Jennifer and Terry Karras of Haymarket; and her daughter Jeanine and son-in-law Dave Smith of Woodbridge; her grandson, Jack Karras of Haymarket; a brother, Carl Gariety and his wife Esther Gariety of Russia, Ohio; a sister, Mary Ellen Thobe and her husband Jerry Thobe of Tipp City, Ohio; a sister-in-law, Iona Gariety of Versailles, Ohio; and many nephews and nieces and a host of loving friends.

Visitation will be at the Baker-Post Funeral Home, 10001 Nokesville Road, Manassas, VA, on April 9 from 6-8 pm. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, 8213 Linton Hall Road, Gainesville, VA, on Tuesday, April 10 at 10:30 am. Joann’s ashes will be placed in the columbarium at Arlington National Cemetery at a later date. Joann requested that donations be made to the Holy Trinity Catholic Church building fund in lieu of flowers.