Joanna Lynn Lowenthal

Joanna Lynn Lowenthal, 61, of Richmond, VA, lost her battle with cancer on September 15, 2024. She passed away peacefully at the home of her father, Joseph Lowenthal, in Powhatan, Virginia, after a four-month illness, Besides her father, a sister, Carolyn Bishop (Russell), of Powhatan, and a brother, David Lowenthal, of Chicago, Illinois, survive her. Her mother, Louise Hoback Lowenthal, predeceased her in 2006.

Joanna was born in Richmond on June 1, 1963, and lived for most of her early life in Virginia Beach, Virginia. She graduated from Princess Anne High School there and studied at both Kee Business College and Tidewater Community College before moving to Richmond, where she spent the rest of her life and where she continued her studies at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College.

In her 40-year career, she held various successful sales representative and trainer positions at several area businesses, retiring at N. B. Handy Distribution. The theater was a true love in her life. She volunteered as an usher at the Altria Theater in Richmond for several years and served as a house manager there and at the Carpenter Center/Dominion Energy Center. She also worked in house management for the Richmond Basement Theater, Richmond Triangle Players, and several other area theaters.

Joanna had an outsized dry, quirky, sometimes wicked, sense of humor and a gift for satire that she expressed ever so craftily in her drawings, her writings, and other arts. In high school, she became an accomplished flautist. Throughout her life, Joanna was an ardent supporter of the arts. She dearly loved the people of the Richmond theater community, and, from what we have learned since her passing, they loved her back. She inherited her mother's talent for art and her father's love of theater.

Her love of travel took her to much of the United States, as well as to several European, Asian, and South and Central American countries. Most recently she traveled to Greece. Israel, Egypt, and Turkey just prior to the war in that area.

Bennett and Barden Funeral Home in Powhatan is in charge of arrangements. Joanna was a very private person, who hadn't wanted to bother anyone with her illness, and, in respect of her wishes, the graveside funeral service will be private. Burial will be in Powhatan Community Cemetery.