Joan S. Heitner
Joan S. Heitner, a retired professor who taught at La Guardia Community College for more than 25 years, “was a fighter all her life, not just the daily struggle with the limitations imposed by her disability, but for numerous progressive causes,” her husband, Dean Heitner, wrote. She was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, in the disability rights movement of the 1970s and ’80s, in the labor movement, and in her Park West community in Manhattan.
Ms. Heitner, who had a progressive hereditary neurological disease that had been diagnosed when she was in her early teens, died on Sept. 6 in New York City. She was 72.
While her love of art, music, theater, and film kept her from ever moving out of Manhattan completely, she and her husband had fallen in love with Montauk on their honeymoon in 1976. They bought a small cottage on Upper Firestone Road there in 1980 and built a larger house on the property in 1984, spending a good part of the year there after they retired.
“She loved the fresh air, the beach, nature, plants, and birdlife that was and still is Montauk,” her husband wrote. She kept a garden with vegetables, herbs, and flowers, and filled her days in Montauk with gardening and exercising in the pool.
A bacteriologist at Mount Sinai Hospital early in her working life, she switched careers in her mid-30s to become a professor and career counselor at La Guardia, where she enjoyed teaching and helping students, many of them disadvantaged immigrants from around the world, get their start in the world of work.
Ms. Heitner was born on Dec. 8, 1942, in Brooklyn to Reuben Smelensky and the former Anne Kellman. She grew up in Brooklyn and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at New York University and a master’s degree in counseling at Hunter College. She worked as a bacteriologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital for two years, then at Mount Sinai for five before moving on to La Guardia Community College.
The Heitners were married on May 18, 1976. “She was the best wife a man could ask for and the best friend anyone could hope for,” Mr. Heitner wrote. They loved to travel together and had been to France, Israel, Ireland, and the Caribbean. She also enjoyed fine dining and cooking. “She would start with a recipe, but then creatively do her own thing.”
A service was held on Sept. 8 at Riverside Memorial Chapel in Manhattan. Burial was at Beth Moses Jewish Cemetery in Farmingdale.
In addition to her husband, Ms. Heitner is survived by a brother, Martin Smelensky of Boynton Beach, Fla.
Memorial contributions have been suggested to the United Spinal Association, at unitedspinal.org; American Jewish World Service, 45 West 36th Street, 11th floor, New York City 10018-7904; Citymeals-on-Wheels, 355 Lexington Avenue, New York City 10017, or Habitat for Humanity, 111 John Street, 23rd floor, New York City 10038.