Joan M. Tompkins, 78
CLARKSBURG, Mass. â€' Joan M. Tompkins, 78, of 100 Henderson Road died Saturday, April 20, 2013, at Williamstown Commons.
Born in Adams on Sept. 1, 1934, daughter of Rene and Mary Donovan Blanchette, she grew up in the Grove section and graduating from the former Adams High School with the class of 1952. While attending high school, she was employed at a local dairy bar.
Mrs. Tompkins was employed at the North Adams Transcript during the Hardman era as a proof reader and typesetter at both the Bank Street and later the American Legion Drive facility. This was during the early days of computer typesetting and page makeup.
During the contraction of the Transcript under the regimes of subsequent ownerships, she experienced one of the greatest disappointments of her life, said family, when she was laid off from an employment that she loved. She later was able to perform similar functions for the Williamstown Advocate under the Densmore and Bernstein ownerships of that publication.
She had earlier worked at the former Sprague Electric Co., first by being allowed early dismissal from high school to work as an office assistant and leaving as an executive secretary in the Research and Development Department when her daughter entered school. After moving to Clarksburg, she was a stay-at-home mother until her daughter began high school and she joined the Transcript.
Mrs. Tompkins was active in public life in Clarksburg, at various times having served as a Brownie troop leader, a town library trustee, a member of the library building committee and a member and a director of the Clarksburg Council on Aging.
She was an avid reader of the mystery genre and was an encyclopedia of television plots and newspaper style. Home, gardening, knitting, puzzles and travel (Canada coast to coast, Alaska, the outer banks of North Carolina, Boston and New England) and birding, all were a significant part of her life.
Her first marriage, during which her daughter, Sharon M. O'Neill was born, ended in divorce.
She and her husband, Charles H. Tompkins, were married on July 20, 1963.
Besides her husband and her daughter, of Gorham, N.H., she leaves a sister, Rita Fontana of Lee; nieces and nephews Marilyn, Paul, David, Stephen, Susan and Barbara; a sister-in-law, Barbara Blanchette, and several cousins.
Her brother, Donald Blanchette, is deceased.
FUNERAL NOTICE â€' Funeral services for Mrs. Tompkins will take place at the convenience of the family. Plans for a celebratory memorial are incomplete at this time. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Clarksburg Council on Aging or the North Adams Public Library through Flynn & Dagnoli-Montagna Home for Funerals, Centra Chapels, 74 Marshall Street, North Adams.