Joan Frances Widmer, known by friends and family as "Bam" (shortened from Bambina, as she was christened by the neighborhood Italian greengrocer) passed away on January 20th at Carolina Meadows, her retirement community in Chapel Hill, NC. She was almost halfway through her 96th year. Up to her death, she was amazed and a little unbelieving that she had achieved that great age. She had a full, creative, interesting, and accomplished life and fulfilled her ardent wish to live independently until her death.
Born on August 18, 1926, in Chicago to Frances Wynn Heile and Charles Heyfield Pike, she and her younger siblings, Patricia and Dick, grew up in a well-to-do household, doted on by their maternal grandmother who loved to take them to concerts, plays, ballets and museums. Their mother, Frances, was a pioneer in many respects by having attended Smith College and even more so in starting and running her own industrial design company in partnership with her sister, Harriet, in the 1930's. Frances was also an accomplished watercolorist who left Chicago at 61 to move to Los Angeles where she worked as a soft toy designer until her death at 73. Career and creativity were in Bam's genes. Bam's father, Charles, from Newfoundland, and whose history is a bit shrouded in mystery, was a much-awarded athlete at UPenn and a physician. The family's early years during the depression included summers in Wisconsin with Bam's maternal grandmother, aunt and uncle at Oconomowoc Lake, a much beloved memory. Bam attended Purdue University, but left to marry her first husband, Harry Leonard, living for the first two years of their marriage in San Francisco where she worked in a lab at the University of California, San Francisco hospital. When she and Harry returned to Chicago, she joined with her mother to start a small company that designed and produced "Snuffy the Clown" and other baby items. The department store, Carson Pirie Scott, in downtown Chicago displayed a multitude of Snuffy the Clowns in their Christmas window one year. Bam traveled throughout the midwest and east coast selling the company's wares to department stores. She left the company to raise two daughters. During the time at home with her kids she began her career in publishing, putting together, in the basement of their suburban home, a winter ski-goers guide being developed with Harry in the early days of that soon-to-be-popular sport. When her youngest went to school, Bam was off to work at Robert Snyder and Associates, a creative agency in Chicago. There, her professional work in publishing began in earnest. The many relationships she came to have through her work with colleagues, clients and friends; and travel all over the world, were the passions that would give her the greatest sense of personal accomplishment and engagement.
Bam always had a keen eye and refined feel for visual arts and design. At Robert Snyder's she worked as an as an art director for an assortment of commercial magazines, including Mainliner Magazine for United Airlines. After her first marriage ended in divorce, she married a publishing colleague, Sheldon Widmer, in 1962 and began a partnership both personal and professional. The two were asked in the late 60's to develop a consumer magazine for Betty Crocker focused on women, and in 1972 they launched the premier issue of SPHERE Magazine, with Bam as editor. Her next decade was an all-consuming life of creative idea-making, content development, design collaboration, and international travel. Primarily about cooking, and with beautiful photography, Sphere also included fashion, travel, crafts and interior design, and food lore and recipes from cultures around the world. There were many internationally themed issues that captured the newly recognized breadth of women's interests around homemaking but also beyond it. Bam was fiercely proud of her work as editor of Sphere (later Cuisine). She was much beloved by the writers, editors, photographers, and recipe developers who worked with her on the magazine. During these years she and Sheldon traveled to many places in Europe and Asia, and to a favorite destination, Haiti, both for the magazine and on their own. They also renovated and beautifully re-designed and furnished several homes on the north side of Chicago where they lived.

The two first retired to the community of Fearrington in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Sadly, Sheldon died when Bam was just 61; she never remarried. She made Carolina Meadows her permanent residence in 2013. In retirement Bam relished a busy, fiercely independent life of concert and play-going; twice-yearly extended stays in London for many years; courses for Seniors; dining and movies with dear friends; and tooling around town in her car, often the chauffeur for fellow residents in her community. She followed politics closely and was a lifelong advocate for women's rights. She was on a first name basis with many people who worked in the prepared foods departments of many stores, but especially her beloved Southern Seasons. In these later years she took much joy in her occasional visits with grandchildren and great grandchildren, watching in fascination as they have grown and developed each in their individual way. She delighted in her one bit of modern technology-a picture frame to which her family uploaded photos of their lives, but especially of her great grandchildren who she found endlessly entertaining and endearing.

She is survived by her daughters Victoria Leonard (Noah Kahn) and Beth Leonard (Doug Pierson); sister Patricia Fricke; stepsons Skip Widmer and Stephen Widmer; grandchildren Bryn Kahn, Miranda Kahn and Emma Pierson; step grandchildren Yancy and Mina Widmer; and great grandchildren Kaiden, Caeleigh and Natasha.
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