Joan Gresh Obituary

Gresh
Joan Kinevan
Gresh
March 31, 1955
May 26, 2024

Joan Kinevan Gresh passed away in Santa Barbara, California on May 26, 2024. Joan was born on March 31, 1955, to Brigadier General Marcos Kinevan, USAF, and Barbara Talbott Kinevan in Tacoma, Washington. As a child in a military family, Joan spent some of her youth in Arlington, Virginia, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Honolulu, Hawaii, where she attended Punahou School. When Joan's father became a permanent professor and Head of the Law Department at the United States Air Force Academy in 1967, she began to call Colorado Springs home.

Joan graduated from Air Academy High School in 1973 and then studied mathematics at Colorado College. After having her first child, Amy, she became a full-time mom and later earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

Joan was a dedicated homemaker and caregiver for many years of her life. She provided unwavering care for her disabled daughter Megan, who lived for 22 years. Megan had a happy disposition despite her limited physical and communication abilities, consequences of the permanent brain damage she suffered after a severe reaction to the pertussis vaccine she received when she was six months old. As time-consuming and tiring as caring for Megan could be, Joan always had time for her older daughter, Amy, whether it was helping with school projects, cheering for her and her teammates at Rampart High School sports competitions, or just providing a listening ear.

Joan had a quick wit enhanced by her superb memory, extensive vocabulary and knowledge of current affairs. She loved to laugh, and her big smile and self-deprecating sense of humor made her approachable and fun. Joan enjoyed gardening, cooking, cross stitching, taking family drives to enjoy Colorado's and California's natural beauty, and playing board games. No one could beat her at Trivial Pursuit. Joan loved scents. While Megan was still living and Joan was volunteering at an artisan shop in Monument, Colorado that served disabled adults, Joan made beautifully scented candles and started her own company, Laughing Coyote Candles.

Joan's favorite activities in her later years revolved around her granddaughters, whom she spent time with regularly. Joan's family is grateful she was able to live her final years in Santa Barbara, where family movie nights, family game nights, and gathering for her son-in-law's barbeque dinners became routine. Holidays, especially Christmas, and family birthdays were always a special time together.
Joan is survived by her daughter, Amy MacLeod, her son-in-law Don MacLeod, and granddaughters Fiona and Kennedy. Joan is predeceased by her daughter, Megan Gresh, and her brother, Mark Kinevan.


Joan was a wonderful mother and grandmother, and her family will miss her guidance, wit, humor and unconditional love tremendously.


Joan, Mom, "Gamma" Joan, we hope you have found your forever skylark:

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.


Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.


- Excerpt from "To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley