It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of one of our most devoted members in the club family. Joan Bledig was known to many of us as a friend, a fossil enthusiast, and a hard-working collaborator on many ESCONI projects including the most recent Mazon Creek books. She was present at nearly all club meetings, as well as on “warehouse days,” and could be seen on the stage writing up specimen tickets during the ESCONI spring fair.

In addition to her dedicated work for ESCONI, Joan volunteered hundreds of hours of her time for organizations such as the Canal Corridor Association and the Grundy County Historical Society. She served for over a decade as a guest curator of Mazon Creek fossils at the Chicago Academy of Sciences, identifying and cataloging thousands of donated specimens.

Joan got her start with collecting in the 1950s when the strip mines around Wilmington and Morris, Illinois, were active. Looking for fossils became a regular, weekend family activity. As a teenager, she worked closely with Dr. William Beecher at the Chicago Academy of Sciences when it was in Lincoln Park and participated in building the museum’s Carboniferous swamp forest display. Reconnecting with ESCONI 25 years ago reinvigorated her original interest, and this passion seemed to fuel every encounter since.

Whatever Joan set her mind to she did so with expertise and tenacity. Her humor could be biting, and her opinion strong, but one could never question her commitment to any project, large or small. She was a part of the lifeblood of this club and will be dearly missed.