Joan Elizabeth (Reiche) Sorensen

Joan Elizabeth Reiche Sorensen, 79, died July 7, 2015, at home in Rockville, Md. A memorial service will be held in Devils Lake on Saturday, July 16, 2016 at 3 p.m. in St. Olaf Lutheran Church, followed by a service for the interment of ashes in Webster Cemetery. Joan Elizabeth Reiche was born in Merrill, Wis., in 1935, the oldest of four daughters born to Wilfred and Prue Reiche. After spending her childhood and high school years in Milwaukee, with summers in Almond, Wis., she attended the University of North Dakota to study journalism. In September 1954, she married fellow UND student John N. “Jack” Sorensen at St. Olaf Lutheran Church in Jack’s hometown of Devils Lake. A year later Jack’s graduate studies brought them east, to Pittsburgh, Pa., and the couple had three daughters there. With all three very young children at home, Joan completed her journalism degree at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh before the family relocated to the Washington, D.C., area in 1967. They settled in Rockville, Md., where Joan lived for the rest of her life and Jack still resides. Joan worked as a journalist and communications professional in the Washington area for more than 25 years before chronic illness forced her early retirement. She reported and wrote for several local Maryland newspapers beginning in 1968 and served as a staff writer for the Montgomery Journal, a county newspaper, from 1973-1977. In that role she provided extensive coverage on education and on county and state legislation and planning. She then worked as a communications specialist for the Board of Education of Frederick County, Md., before joining a consulting firm in Columbia, Md., that specialized in strategic and operational planning for organizations. In 1988 she founded Knowledge Transfer Options, a consulting service specializing in organizational planning and training support. Her clients included the U.S. General Accounting Office, the U.S. Post Office, and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). She retired in 1993. While raising her family, Joan was an active member of the Unitarian Church of Rockville, where she taught Sunday school and worked on the site committee, planning and planting the grounds of the church. Throughout her life, she was a voracious reader with an astonishing range of interests; an accomplished cook who never tired of feeding family and friends; and a passionate lover of flowers, gardens, and gardening. Joan genuinely loved and respected children and found them endlessly fascinating. She formed bonds with many young people and had an impact on numerous young lives beyond those of her own offspring. Above all, Joan found joy in her abiding relationships with family and friends, which she nurtured lovingly and carefully throughout the years. Over the nearly 61 years of their marriage, Joan and Jack returned to North Dakota and Minnesota, where Joan’s sisters lived, many times. Before Joan’s health made travel prohibitive, they spent several summers in Webster, living on Jack’s family farm. For the last twenty-five years of her life, Joan managed chronic pain and illness with dignity while keeping her relationships with her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and friends at the forefront of her life. At the end of her life, following complications from a sudden illness, she was surrounded by family. In addition to her loving and beloved husband, Jack, she is survived by their three daughters, Laura Sorensen Dodge of Wolfsville, Md., Nancy Sorensen of Rockville, Md., and Kaaren Sorensen of Swarthmore, Pa.; her sisters Barbara Beiers of Princeton, Minn., Katherine Welsh of Duluth, Minn., and Susan Beiers, also of Duluth; eight grandchildren; and four great grandchildren.