Joanne Gunn Casey

Joanne (Gunn) Casey, who stated in the Woodlawn High School graduating class 1937 yearbook under “Ambition” that hers was “To discover new things in the sky and maybe win the Nobel Prize”, died on November 23rd. Her high school nickname was “Red” for her fluffy reddish hair. She was 104 years old. Her son Paul said she was witty, articulate, interested in the world, and happy until the end.

Joanne was born on May 19th, 1919 to May (Rottman) Gunn, a homemaker with an accounting degree, and Paul Gunn, a stone mason and building contractor, in Terre Haute, Indiana. The family spent her early years on her father’s family cherry farm on the shore of Lake Michigan before moving to Tampa, Florida at age seven. The local Cuban community instilled in her many recollections of enjoying exotic delicacies and fruits that were unknown at that time further north. The family moved to Birmingham when she was still in elementary school. Her mother had the unprecedented gumption to petition the Birmingham Board of Education for an exemption so her daughter could take mechanical drafting in high school which only boys could do at that time. Joanne got the exemption. During the Great Depression, her father built brick walkways and stone stairs on weekends for the Howard College campus (later renamed Samford University) in exchange for Joanne’s tuition. Joanne received her Bachelor of Science in 1941 with a major in Biology and a minor in Chemistry.

After graduation, she worked at the old Highland Avenue Baptist Hospital as a laboratory technician. The “lab girls” had an oppressive supervisor who would often pop in to search for something that she could reprimand them for. Finally, Joanne had had enough. One morning their supervisor burst in and started opening and closing all the cabinets and drawers with a bang as usual. Then as she jerked open another drawer she shrieked in horror and ran out of the lab tripping over herself. Joanne had put a coiled rubber rattlesnake with mouth open and fangs out in one of the top drawers. That supervisor never gave them grief again.

The family was vacationing on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1947, before accurate weather forecasts, when a powerful hurricane hit. As the storm surge began to rise in the middle of the night, her father took a saw and ladder from his tools in the car, climbed into the attic of the rented cabin and cut an escape hole in the roof “just in case”. The surge level would eventually top 15 feet and that hole was a life saver. As rising water forced them to clamber up the ladder, Joanne paused to put on her hard soled, lace-up shoes. Everyone else riding out the storm on the roof was barefoot in pajamas. Wearing those shoes made her the only person capable of going for help by wading through the disaster zone strewn with hazardous debris after the water level started to fall. For the rest of her life Joanne remained acutely aware of both risk and the effectiveness of taking thoughtful precautions.

After World War II, Joanne was a laboratory research technician on one of several teams across the country working on the Federal program to develop an effective and safe vaccine for polio which was ravaging the whole world. Joanne’s team based in Birmingham isolated strains of polio which were used to develop the vaccine that has saved millions from severe, permanent disabilities. Joanne continued work as a laboratory research technician with a team studying cancer cells in tens of thousands of white mice housed in the basement of the old Highland Hospital.

She married Dr. Albert E. Casey who directed research at Highland Hospital in 1952. Initially they lived in a high rise one-bedroom apartment near the University of Alabama Birmingham and hosted a young doctor cousin freshly arrived from Ireland on their living room couch until he got a good foothold in his adopted country. In their first home, they hosted a couple who had just moved from Chicago after discovering how polio was transmitted from one person to another. Joanne was part of a community of medical researchers from all over the world who had found their way to Birmingham. She, her husband with a team from Birmingham spent several summers in Ireland and Norway taking and processing blood samples from thousands of backcountry farmers along with their family medical histories to discover links between heredity and susceptibility to diseases. Their research findings were published in numerous medical and scientific journals of national standing and presented at major cancer and hematology conferences around the world.

Joanne was one of the 33 original founding members of Vestavia Hills Baptist Church along with her husband who was the first chairman of the church. She was never overtly religious but made sure her little son said his prayers before bedtime and she volunteered for many years minding young children during Sunday services.

Joanne’s curiosity about the world was not limited to what she saw through a microscope. She inherited the travel bug from her parents and with her husband and son continued to explore the highways and byways of Alabama, the South, and numerous foreign countries from major capitals to wonderous natural environments. She made at least three road trips per year to the Smokey Mountains and Florida through her 102nd birthday.

People would always ask her to what she attributed her longevity. She would sarcastically reply, “My righteous living”. But really, factors include participating in senior aerobics and strength training classes “religiously” three times per week from age 72 at Shades Mountain Baptist Church switching to the City of Vestavia’s New Merkel House until she was 101 when the pandemic hit; always being interested in seeing and doing new things and going places; having a positive attitude accompanied by slipping humor into just about everything she said; a diet open to almost anything, with ample fresh fruit and vegetables but little processed food; friends she made in the neighborhood and at aerobics class; extended family members; and most of all the dog she constantly had to take care and keep track of.

In addition to her son Paul, Joanne is survived by children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren by her husband’s earlier marriage.

A public visitation will be held on Wednesday, November 29, 2023 from 10:00am-11:00am at Johns Ridout's Elmwood Chapel located at 800 Dennison Ave. SW Birmingham, Alabama 35211 with a Funeral Service to follow at 11:00am. Burial will be held at Elmwood Cemetery.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.johnsridoutselmwoodchapel.com for the Casey family.