08/31/2026
Joanne Eller Bell
Joanne Eller Bell, who died peacefully Aug. 27 at her home in Fleming Island, Fla., once accomplished what many Americans dream of but few achieve: She looked a president of the United States square in the eye and told him to shut up.
Even better, the president obeyed.
It was 1981, and Ronald Reagan was recovering from a gunshot wound at George Washington University Hospital in Washington. He was tired and heavily medicated after surgery but continued talking with his doctors, nurses and aides. Eventually, the recovery room emptied and the lights were lowered so the president could sleep.
Bell, his recovery-room nurse, placed a gauze pad over his eyes to block the remaining light and stepped away. Within seconds, Reagan removed it and resumed chatting with anyone and everyone.
Bell returned to his bedside, took the pad in her hand and said, “Mr. President, in the most polite way I can tell you, when I put this over your eyes, that means I want you to shut up and go to sleep.”
Reagan winked and closed his eyes.
Bell, who also answered to Mom, Grandma Jo, Jo-Jo and, curiously, Jughead, never regarded that day as her 15 minutes of fame. She believed her real window of acclaim stretched across six decades of raising four children. Mom loved them with an irrational extravagance, a love so wide and deep, it covered every past mistake and contained all future forgiveness.
Mom never lectured her children about how to live a meaningful life. She simply got up every morning and, without ever saying a word, showed them.
When a father down the street needed help raising two infants after their mother died during childbirth, Mom went. Week after week, month after month. When AIDS patients needed someone to sit with them after their own families had abandoned them, Mom sat. Even after her shift ended. When a bridge partner needed a medical procedure in Atlanta, Mom grabbed her car keys. Their road trip lasted a week.
That was how Mom taught nearly everything that mattered: one small act at a time, her children watching and absorbing every unspoken lesson.
Eventually, with the clear-eyed judgment of a woman who had raised two sets of twins—you read that correctly—Mom decided her children had received more than their fair share of her love and attention.But she never gave us less. She simply found more for her seven grandchildren and one great-grandson.
Their photographs, along with one gilded oil painting, came to occupy every available inch of refrigerator, table and wall space in her home. Whenever a new batch of photos showed up in the mail, Mom always made room for them. Only the garage and bathrooms were granted narrow exemptions.
Mom was born July 1, 1937, in Asheville, N.C. Her family later moved to Jacksonville when she was 7. She graduated from Bishop Kenny High School and later from Barry College, now Barry University
Years afterward, while still working at the hospital and cooking a mean meatloaf back home for her family, she returned to school at Marymount College. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1988 not because raising four children and caring for patients had left her with too much free time, but because Mom never considered exhaustion a persuasive argument against doing something.
Except for Saturdays and Sundays in the fall when her Florida State Seminoles and Miami Dolphins were playing, Mom was a devoted Catholic. She resented old age, but knew the promise of her faith. That the dust would be re-gathered and the knot would be re-tied.
Mom was preceded in death by her former husband, Ronald Irving Bell; her brothers, Douglas Eller and Jack Eller; and her longtime boyfriends, Don Shula and Paul Newman. The romances with Shula and Newman were, by all available evidence, one-sided, though this never seemed to trouble her.
Joanne is survived by her son Ron, his wife Fiona, and their children, Julia, Daniel and Christopher; her daughter Mary and her husband, Dante, and Mary's daughter Aubra; her son David and his son, Tyler, Tyler's wife Morgan, and their son, Bowden; and her son Robert, his wife, Marcia, and their children Riley and Kate, as well as Riley's wife Justine.
They were the people in Mom’s photos. They were her life’s work, her 15 minutes of fame. And to the end, they remain the best portrait of her.
A funeral mass will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, September 18th, at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Fleming Island, with a reception at Sullivan Hall to follow.
The family requests that in place of flowers, donations be made to Autism Speaks - Autism Speaks donations
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