Syracuse, NY: Joan Marie (Alto) Buttner, age 87, a native of the Bronx and a long time Syracuse resident, passed away on August 12. Joan was a joyful, upbeat person who loved people, nature, music and her faith. She was a New York City girl at heart, growing up in a household of eleven with her Finnish-American father and Irish immigrant mother, her Aunt Bessie and Uncle Tom, and her six cousins. She attended Hunter College in NYC and worked at the Macy’s flagship store in Manhattan, where she landed a job in the music department based on her ability to play the piano.
Joan’s father Emil and her uncle Tom McMahon built a house by hand “in the country” up in Hopewell Junction, NY, where the extended family, including Joan’s Finnish grandmother Hilda Ollie, would spend time. Joan and some of her cousins learned to drive on the property in an old bread truck that her uncle had acquired from his work as a mechanic for a bakery.
Joan met her husband of 51 years, Robert, at Manhattan College, where he was an engineering student. After their wedding at The Church of the Assumption in the Bronx, Joan and Bob lived in Mineola and Bethpage, Long Island, where they had babies Kathleen (Doug Anderson) and Robert (Bridget Hueber) before moving to Syracuse in 1961, where they had Audrey (John Armani) and Regina Buttner.
Joan was a full-time mother and home-maker, while also being active in painting, flower arranging (blue ribbon at New York State Fair) and parish life at St. Ann’s Church on Onondaga Blvd. She was a woman of strong Catholic faith and enjoyed supporting her parish, especially participating in the annual Holiday Open House.
Many holidays and summers were spent driving Rt. 17 back to the City and Long Island to be with the McMahon and Buttner/Harte relatives. Joan loved nature, gardening, and bird watching, keeping detailed notes in her Birds of North America
guide book.
Joan adopted Syracuse whole-heartedly as her new home, exploring parks and museums with her family, and learned to swim as an adult at the Syracuse YWCA. She also went back to school, studying nursing at Central Tech and receiving her LPN certificate in 1978. She worked at St. Camillus for several years before she and Bob moved to Lowville, NY in the mid-1980’s.
The couple bought a home in rural Beaver Falls, NY, where Bob was chief engineer for the Boise Cascade paperboard and latex mills. Joan continued to volunteer with their parish and renewed her love of painting, especially watercolors of local scenes. She cared for her Irish mother, Mary Ellen (Honan) Alto, in her home late in life.
After enough North Country winters, Joan and Bob retired to Gulf Shores, Alabama, where Joan continued to be active in parish life, volunteered in the library at St. Albert’s Catholic grammar school, and was a strong Respect Life advocate. They later moved to southwest Florida to be near family.
Joan was predeceased by her husband in 2008, and by brother-in-law Larry Harte, sister-in-law Sr. Audrey Buttner, as well as her cousins Tommy, Kathy, and George. She is survived by her four children, sister-in-law Virginia Harte, cousins Christine, Eileen and Brian; as well as grandchildren Justin (Bobbi), Cassandra (Ian), Laura, Tom, Melissa, James, John, Rowan, Andy, Brendan, Brian; and great-grandchildren Christopher, Nicholas, Aurelia and Huxley.
Calling hours will be at Holy Family Church, 127 Chapel Drive in Fairmont, NY, on Tuesday, August 16 from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m., followed by a funeral Mass and lunch reception. All well-wishers are welcome. To send a condolence or share a memory please visit: www.doughertyfuneralhomes.com
