Berkeley Heights: Joan S. Murphy, age 66, died August 30, 2009, at her home in Berkeley Heights. Born at Fort Benning in Georgia, she resided in North Plainfield before moving to Berkeley Heights in 1971.

Joan graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 1965 with a B.A. in Elementary Education. She was a teacher in North Plainfield before retiring in 2003.

Joan has been busy traveling the world with her husband and spending time with her children and grandchildren. She especially loved family gatherings and had just returned from the Outer Banks, NC, where she celebrated her 43rd Wedding Anniversary.

Surviving are her husband Douglas W. Murphy; her daughters Kristine Joan Mitchell and her husband David; Sheryl Ann Murphy; Jilleen Elizabeth Trulove and her husband Berry; her brothers Robert and Donald Smith; her five grandchildren Nicole, Kyle, Elizabeth, Adam and Brandon.

http://higginsfuneralhome.com/?p=obituary_view&id=65167

From Laurel Hessing... On the morning of August 30th, the Murphy family and our Free Acres family lost Joan Murphy. Joan had come to Free Acres before she and Doug become leaseholders. When she was a child she would come to visit her uncle Mel and aunt Mary Zimmerman. From those days she always remembered swimming in the pool when it had a natural sand bottom except for the deep end. She remembered building sandcastles that had moats and fancy grooves that started at the top of the castles and went right into the water; something that would not be allowed at the present day pool.

Kristine was born in 1969 while Joan and Doug were living in a small apartment in North Plainfield. Douglas was a tax attorney and Joan had taught school from 1965 and was a teacher until her retirement in 2003. It was the year 1970 when Joan’s aunt Mary Zimmerman noticed Mr. Wolf walking around his property at 51 Beechwood Lane. Albert Wolf had been absent from the community many years and no one had lived in the house for more than a decade. The Free Acres children called the Wolf place “the haunted house”. It was fortuitous that Mary happened to run into Mr. Wolf because Mary was able to tell Joan and Doug that there was a house for sale in Free Acres. John Wolf had been a leaseholder from 1928 at 51 Beechwood Lane and His son Albert had inherited the holding in 1937 but had abandoned it to the forces of nature in the 1950’s.

There was a great deal of work for the Murphy’s to do to make the home livable. After building closets, adding a bathroom, replacing the coal furnace with a more modern way to heat their home, replacing all the fixtures in the kitchen and bath, Joan, Doug, with baby Kristine were able to move in, and the Murphys became leaseholders 11/29/70. Sheryl was born in 1972 and Jill in 1975. Joan always loved Free Acres from her childhood days and we will miss her kindness, her sparkle, her generosity.

Dr. Carol Kaye (Née Klatzkie) was born in 1925 and died on September 24th, 2008. Carol was the daughter of Margaret and Louis Klatzkie who lived at leasehold #14 in the Watchung section of Free Acres from 1935 until Margaret and Louis transferred their holding to Carol, their eldest daughter, in 1969. Carol was a leaseholder and lived in Free Acres until 1985. She was a member of "Mortar Board" an honorary society at the University of Wisconsin and received her PhD at the University of Michigan. She did post graduate work in psychoanalysis, was a member of IPTAR, a psychoanalytic institute and was in private practice for over 35 years. Carol left her sister, Barbara, brother-in-law Raymond Wolfinger and nephew, Nicholas. According to her sister Barbara, Carol adored Free Acres and all who knew her from her childhood growing up in Free Acres and when she returned as a leaseholder wil l surely miss her.