August 26, 1928 – October 15, 2022

Joan Viola (Sall) Anderson 
August 26, 1928 – October 15, 2022
Joan died quietly at her home in Renew Memory Care, surrounded by loving family. She survived her parents, Fred and Pearl Sall, her sisters, Frary Flood and Naoma Aeder, her daughter-in-law Jill (Greg) Anderson, her grandson Erik Anderson and her husband of 75 years, Phil Anderson, who died July 22, 2022. Family survivors include her twin sister, Phyllis Sall, and Phil and Joan’s children: Monica (Gary) Miller, Connie (Larry) Zimmer, Angie (Don) Parkison and Greg Anderson. Phil and Joan had eight grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren.
Joan came from Holdrege, Nebraska, where she and Phil attended the Lutheran church and became sweethearts during their years at the town’s high school. They married soon after their high school graduation, and the couple moved seven times in seven years, until they settled in Glenwood Springs in 1954. Since Glenwood had no Lutheran church at the time, they raised their family in the Methodist church, where Joan started a children’s weekly Bible studies program. She had learned to sing harmony at age four with her twin, Phyllis, sitting on either side of their mother at the piano, and music performance was important to Joan throughout her life. She and Patsy Beattie organized a high school chapel choir, building it from ten singers to over fifty in a decade, and later, Joan started a women’s barbershop quartet that performed many times for local groups. After Phil and Joan joined Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, she led the adult choir for several years. She and Phil were active members, supporting projects that included the church’s pipe organ, its stained glass window, the Helping Hands program, and missionary activities.  
With four children in local schools, Joan worked for optometrist Bill Zilm and later for Holy Cross Electric, saving for college tuition. Meanwhile, she took up painting with acrylics, served on the art guild and contributed paintings in fall art festivals. Later, she painted and fired china, and she made her own costumes to portray historical figures in PEO programs. In 2002, she wrote and illustrated A Visit to the Valley, a children’s book about a family of bears in Glenwood Springs.
The family owes heartfelt thanks to the caring attending staff at Renew, the surgery and recovery personnel at Valley View Hospital, and the thoughtful and loving professionals of Hospice of the Valley.
A memorial service is planned for 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 29 at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 1630 Grand Avenue in Glenwood Springs.