Joan M. Culnan

Joan M. Culnan, wife of former Courier-Post columnist Dennis M. Culnan, died in his arms while they slept Tuesday morning, three days after their 45th wedding anniversary and her release from the hospital to home hospice care. She was 65. A cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance, she is survived by her husband, Dennis, Sr. of Mount Laurel; two sons, Dennis, Jr. of Mount Laurel, and Dr. Derek M. Culnan, his wife, Jessica, and their two children: Dillon, 3, and Kaitlin 1, of Harrisburg, Pa. In 1976, her husband wrote the following column to honor their 10th wedding anniversary. WOW! WAS IT really 17 years ago? I was only 14, a punk high school freshman trying to prove how tough and slick and bad he was. "Tough" wasn't just fighting tough. "Tough" was the way you dressed, whom you knew, where you went and how you made out. I had a "tough" mouth. I talked a good fight, a good dance, a good night in the back seat of a parked car. I just wasn't—even at the callow age of 14—the guy you'd want your sister to date. But all of a sudden there she was, sweet and shy and delicate as a snowflake…a girl named Joan. I was in love. Yeah, you do fall in love at 14...and you fall in love a million times after. If you're lucky, you fall in love most of those times with the same person. Everybody told her to stay away from me. "He's no good." "Nice girls don't go out with him." But, as I've always told her, she's a dumb Polack…too dumb to know the kind of guy she shouldn't fall in love with. She did what she wanted to do. She may weigh only 100 pounds but no one pushes or shoves her or makes her do anything she doesn't want to do. So, throughout high school we went steady but it was a rocky steady. We broke up every week. Boy, was my Polack thick. And talk about stubborn! It seemed we were always fighting over the same thing. I kept telling her I'd respect her—I had told a lot of girls I'd respect them, and they bought it. But she kept telling me about God and marriage and lot of other jive that meant "No!" (Boy, those nuns really did their job.) We broke up, made up and broke up again. If it wasn't because "things are getting too serious," it was because of her mother's complaints about my running around with my shirt wide open in public or my irresponsibility in accumulating a record 173 parking tickets in one year. While Joan was racking up first honors in school, I was garnering suspensions and detentions like they were going out of style. But somehow I managed to write an essay and win a scholarship to a journalism school. I don't know exactly how that crafty Polack engineered it, but we got married. Oh, sure, we loved each other but "love" was, and still is, a terribly misused word. I think we got married because all of her girlfriends were getting married and she didn't want to be the only girl on the block without a husband. Everybody knew it was doomed from the start. Everybody knew I wasn't the marrying kind…a leopard doesn't change its spots…an alley cat is always an alley cat. I could have saved a lot of time, packing and leaving…and a lot of damn bruises too…if I'd known then what I know today. You just can't imagine how much wallop 101 pounds of enraged Polack can pack until she's jumping on your chest for not coming home until eight in the morning. You can't imagine how infuriated you can get until your wife speeds off in a huff, leaving you choking and gasping in a cloud of car exhaust fumes and facing a five-mile walk home. Talk about temper! BUT THEN YOU remember those late sleep-ins until dinner time on Sunday, those self-declared holidays in mid-week. You remember sitting on a curb in stone Harbor on a lazy Sunday morning, eating cream doughnuts and drinking chocolate milk. YOU REMEMBER the scraping and scrimping…TV dinners seven days a week, 50-cent lunches five days a week and freeloading a free dinner at our parents' whenever we could. You remember a very fashion-conscious wife making do with an outdated wardrobe to save toward a house. You remember the big weekend treat: Driving over for a 99-cent breakfast special, and visiting the construction site of a house you prayed wouldn't be finished until you'd saved enough for a down payment. You remember the conflicts. A girl-woman torn by the Cinderella dream that all American girls grow up believing. It's getting married and having children and staying home to live happily ever after. A girl-woman faced with the reality that dreams cost money, two salaries are better than one and a career is preferable to the intellectual wasteland of TV soap operas. YOU REMEMBER the smile on her face when she came out of a drugged sleep to greet the son she'd just brought into world: "Hi, Little Den." You remember the good and you remember the bad. There were times…many times…when we felt like throwing in the towel. Instead, we invested another day, another "I'm sorry," another "We'll try again" (because love is being able to say "I'm sorry.") OH, WE'LL FIGHT again and I'll walk out again, only to drive to the nearest phone to give her a chance to ask me to come home. But I'm no longer that tough, punk kid of 14, although I'm still brash and loud-mouthed. And she's no longer that na?ve and shy little girl, although she's still shy and na?ve. I still love those memories, but I couldn't love or live with that little girl I met 17 years ago, or that girl I married 10 years ago or even the confused girl-woman of five years ago. Nor could she love or live with that punk kid she met 17 years ago, or the bridegroom he was 10 years ago or even the ambitious egotist of five years ago. (I'm still egotistical.) BECAUSE WE'RE no longer those people…they were yesterday, we are today. We've grown away from those people. We've grown away from them, together. How much you grow isn't important. What is important is that you grow together. We've grown a lot in 17 years and we've fought to grow together. If we hadn't, we'd have grown apart and our love would have died. Saturday we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. There's no guarantee for a 25th or even an 11th. You don't get any guarantees with marriage. You get a chance to invest and if you're willing to invest enough…if both are willing to invest enough…sometimes it works. Look, Mom! I've made it…so far. She is also survived by her sister, Diane Taylor of Mount Laurel, brother-in-laws William McGraw of Mount Laurel and Ronald Culnan and Kenneth Culnan of Philadelphia, as well as nine nieces and nephews and 15 great-nieces and great-nephews. Mass of Christian Burial will be held Saturday at 10:00 a.m. at St. Mary's Church, Springdale Road, Cherry Hill where friends and family will gather at 9 a.m. for a musical interlude. Viewing is Friday 6 to 9 pm, Bradley's Funeral Home, Route 73 Cherry Hill. In lieu of flowers, contributions are requested for the Cooper Hospital Foundation. Arrangements by BOUCHER FUNERAL HOME, Deptford.

Joan M. Culnan

November 22, 1945 - May 10, 2011