Joan Louise (Reeves) Grant
Joan Louise (Reeves) Grant died peacefully at the age of 92 at her daughter’s home in Muskegon November 18, 2020, following a 22-year battle with dementia. Joan was born in Carleton May 22, 1928 to Henry and Nettie (Everett) Reeves. She graduated Carleton High School and then attended Stevens College, where she studied and graduated with a degree in photography and interior design. After college, she returned to Carleton, where she married her high school sweetheart, Wesley Grant February 25, 1950.
They established their home together in Detroit Beach along the banks of Lake Erie, where Joan worked as a photographer for the Monroe Evening News and opened the Carleton Photography Studio while growing a family of five young children. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Grant family would spend many weekends and summers traveling up to the family cabins at Canada Creek Ranch near Onaway.
In 1969, they bravely lived out their dream by leaving their hometown and moving their family north to Rogers City; where they purchased a downtown business with an attached home and opened The Big North Laundromat. They also established Big North Decorating at the same location, and in the mid-1990s opened Grant Interiors in Harbor Springs. Joan was very inspired by her upholstery work, which brought her challenging joys and a career using her interior decorating skills. She loved all the beautiful pieces of furniture she preserved for many families in northern Michigan.
Joan was also a tenacious, creative, and inspiring leader, who marshalled her talents and helped others in the community to accomplish what she would tell you was her most important work. She helped to preserve the county’s local history by securing necessary funding and co-founding the beautiful Presque Isle County Historical Museum in Rogers City.
Joan will be remembered by her children for her loving encouragement by example to work and play hard. She often expected several hours of work from each of her children before they could go play with the neighborhood gang. Joan could often be found in the evening counting coins from the laundromat or working in the upholstery shop to finish some project and she would be back at it in early morning hours. She was a visionary for not only the family businesses, and her community work, but also for each of her children. She encouraged them to seek their own path and build on their own strengths. Consequently, her children and grandchildren grew to be a remarkably diverse group of individuals.
Joan’s favorite place to play was “the Cabin” at Lake May. For enjoyment, she loved to read and to paint beautiful natural landscapes of the world around her. For her grandchildren, Joan’s memory will live in the sound of a slamming screen door, the feeling of pine needles on bare feet, the smell of coffee in the morning, and in the vivid colors of her paintings that hang in all of their homes. For her great-grandchildren, Joan was a woman who always had time to listen with a gentle smile. When her w
Joan is survived by her children, Mark Grant, Terry Grant, Alice (Gene) Meldrum, Ruth (Dave) Monte and her foster daughter, Petra (Arthur) Blair; her brother-in-law, Donald Grant; her grandchildren, Rebecca (Ian) Meldrum-Roy, Jared (Lauren) Meldrum, Michael Maj, Amanda (Kyle) Mulder, Mara Maj, and Tyler (Leah) Meldrum; and 11 great-grandchildren. She is predeceased by parents, Henry and Nettie Reeves; her brother, Thomas Reeves; her husband, Wesley Grant; and her son, Paul Grant.
A private memorial will be held in the spring of 2021. The Grant family requests any remembrance of Joan’s life be given to the Presque Isle County Historical Museum Endowment Fund, managed by the Community Foundation for Northeast Michigan.