Joan Caton (nee Scamell) left us on Saturday, February 19^th to join her late husband, Reverend Deacon Gene Caton, in the hope of Christ’s resurrection. 

Joan was 89 years old and lived a truly wonderful life.  She was born in 1932, during the thick of the depression and spent most of her childhood like many in her generation living in a very small house with her parents, two aunts and her grandmother.  Despite the circumstances of the time, she always talked about having a very happy childhood.  When she graduated high school, she attended Miss Hickey’s Secretarial School in Saint Louis and became a Secretary for the G M & O Railroad, where she worked from 1950 – 1958.  She met her husband, Gene, in 1950 and they married in 1955.  In 1958, they had their first child and Joan left her job to raise their family which eventually grew to five kids.  In 1970, she went back to work as a Secretary at Oakville Senior High School where she spent the next 27 years.  She retired in 1997.    

Joan loved spending time with her family, especially at their second home on Table Rock Lake. Over the years, they created lots of great memories at the lake house.  She also had many long-term friendships, some of which dated all the way back to her time at the railroad.  She and her friends got together on a regular basis for decades.   

And then there were the dogs.  Joan had a long line of Maltese puppies as sidekicks for over 45 years.  There was Daisy, Daisy II, Abby, Annie and Claire, and Joan was rarely seen without one of them by her side. 

In 2006, Joan was diagnosed with her first bout of breast cancer.  She beat it only to have it come back again five years later.  She beat that, too.  Through it all, she never lost her smile or her upbeat attitude.  She was amazing.  While everyone around her was a wreck, she was a rock.

Not too many years after that, Alzheimer’s crept into her life and we began the long goodbye.  Once again, she was a rock.  Always happy and smiling.  Never a bad day. This was only possible due to the selflessness and sacrifice of her daughter (our sister) Sue Caton who acted as her loving caregiver and best friend during the waning years of her life.     

Joan was the devoted mother of Linda (Rick) Roesch, Tim (Susan) Caton, Patrick (Angie) Caton, Sue Caton and Don (Kelly) Caton; cherished grandmother of Jennifer (Tom) Klingeman, Tina (Steve) Nielson, Alex Caton, Lindsay Caton, Jack Caton, Joe (Alisse) Caton, Sam Caton, Taylor Caton, Ryan Caton, Daniel Caton and Trenton Caton and beloved great-grandmother of Makenzie Klingeman and Desmond Klingeman.

We will be saying our final goodbyes to Joan on Friday, March 4^th.  There will be a visitation from 9:15 AM to 11:15 AM at Mary, Mother of the Church – 5901 Kerth Road – St Louis, MO  63128, followed by a funeral Mass at 11:30AM.  In lieu of flowers, donations to the Alzheimer’s Association at www.alz.org or Goode Life Rescue at www.glrescue.org are appreciated.

For those who are not able to attend services for Joan may view a livestream of the service with the following links:

Link #1 > from our vendor: https://boxcast.tv/view/funeral-for-joan-caton-339228

Link #2 > via our website: https://marymother.org/live-stream-of-our-mass