Mary Joanne Sipe

Mary Joanne (Nasuti) Sipe died peacefully at her home in the Falls Hill neighborhood in Falls Church, VA on Saturday, May 2, 2020. Joanne, as she was known, had lived a long, full and adventurous life. She was born as a twin with brother John Antonio Nasuti on 4 June 1927 at Georgetown Hospital in Washington, D.C. to her WWI veteran and Italian immigrant father, Antonio Nasuti and his wife, Mary Hugh Hiley of Bethesda, MD. Joanne and her twin were raised in Bethesda on Oak Place, off Old Georgetown Road at a time when Bethesda was in the countryside. Her mother, a daughter of a long-standing Georgia family, had moved to DC taking on employment with the State Department. Her father, who had been severely wounded during the war, stayed home to care for the twins despite his war wounds. She and her twin were joined 12 years later by her younger brother, Dana.

Her youth was filled with many neighborhood friends, most all of which remained lifelong friends. Summers were spent traveling by car to visit her mother’s family in Georgia and Florida and her father’s family in Bridgeton, NJ. Joanne graduated from Bethesda Chevy Chase High School and then spent two years at Wooster College in Ohio until family finances necessitated the need for her to return home. She attended the Washington School for Secretaries. In 1949, she secured a job with an unnamed agency housed on the Mall in Washington, DC. Joanne would not discuss with whom she was employed, even to friends and family, but it was soon apparent that she was working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In 1952, she accepted an overseas assignment to Vienna, Austria where she learned to read, write and speak German fluently. She spent eight years in Vienna with the Agency during which time it was considered the spy capital of the world given its neutrality and being situated close to the Iron Curtain.

While in Austria she enjoyed playing tennis, skiing, ice skating on the frozen Danube River and going to Fasching balls (the German/Austrian version of Mardi Gras). She also traveled extensively throughout Germany, Austria and Italy. Joanne was quite fearless in her adventures, driving alone in her convertible VW bug through snowstorms to the astonishment of those where she arrived. One day she decided to travel to her father’s hometown of Lanciano, Italy on the Adriatic coast. Despite not speaking Italian, she set off in her beloved VW and arrived in a few days. Finding the local schoolhouse, she entered and showed her passport to the schoolmaster. Two young Nasuti boys were called to the front of the classroom and they took her to the family home, leading to an impromptu reunion with extended and previously unknown family members despite the language barrier.

She returned to the DC area in 1959 and continued her career with the CIA. Joanne met her husband Harry Wood Sipe at a dinner party held by mutual friends. They were married in the Mt. Olivet United Methodist Church in Arlington, VA on 15 May 1965 and settled in Falls Church in 1967. She resigned from the Agency in 1966 to raise a family. In 1983 she rejoined the CIA as an intelligence analyst, retiring in December 1998. In June 1999, she was awarded the Career Intelligence Medal, the CIA’s 6th highest award. The award reads in part: “In recognition of her exceptional achievements with the Central Intelligence Agency for over 32 years. Throughout here distinguished career, Ms. Sipe served with unwavering dedication, unquestionable loyalty and integrity, and a sophisticated understanding of the task at hand. Ms. Sipe’s outstanding record of accomplishment contributed substantially to the mission of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

During her retirement she remained active with family, friends, the church, Bible study, volunteering in the community, and participating in water aerobics into her late eighties. Joanne was a devoted member of the Falls Church Anglican church. She traveled extensively in retirement with her husband and following his death in 2011, her younger daughter. Never turning down a chance at a new adventure, in August 2007, she accompanied her son and daughter-in-law on a horseback riding trip in the Rocky Mountains at age 80. Joanne also took great delight in her grandchildren, her nieces and nephews and their children.

She was preceded in death by her husband Harry, her infant grandson Jeb Harrison Sipe, and her twin brother John. She is survived by her daughter Christina White (Kevin) of Brambleton, VA, son John Sipe (Tisha) of Gainesville, VA, daughter Claire Sipe of McLean, VA, her grandchildren Emily White of Reston, VA, Stephen White and Brendan White of Brambleton, VA, and Jackson and Cooper Sipe of Gainesville, VA. She is also survived by her brother, Dana Nasuti of Newark, DE, her brother-in-law John Sipe of Harrisonburg, VA and numerous nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions be made in her name to the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation https://www.ciamemorialfoundation.org/.