Joan Ford, widow of Yankees' Hall of Famer Whitey Ford, dies at 92

Joan Margaret Ford gave her family “nothing but beautiful memories” as she led the household and supported her husband, Yankees legendary pitcher Whitey Ford, her family said.

It was a home game when Joan, a six-time country club golf champion, would move Whitey’s All-Star, Cy Young and other prestigious awards off a table to make room for golf trophies won by her and her son, family members said. He’d move his back but referred to her as “the athlete of the family.”

“They just loved each other and made each other laugh,” said son Eddie Ford, of Manhattan and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The two helped bring attention to the plight of older generations of Yankees players, who were not given pensions, family members said. They raised funds for these players’ retirement and medical needs and lobbied the younger Yankees to donate more, they said.

Joan Ford, who split her time between Lake Success and Fort Lauderdale, died Dec. 18 from the flu. She was 92.

She was stock-market savvy, building nest eggs for her grandchildren, relatives said, but the evergreen memories that brought smiles to them revolved around her mix of efficiency and “ditzy” personality. Once, when her husband woke up to go to the bathroom, the bed was made by the time he returned but he wasn’t finished sleeping. She thought the woman who gave them directions in the car was really smart and didn’t know it was the GPS. One Christmas at the dinner table, she pointed to the hardiest plants she had ever watered, and her sister broke the news that they were fake; Joan Ford laughed the loudest.

Eddie and his wife, Cathi Ford, who lived for years with her, said they would wake up to find their laundry done.

"She was always trying to make everything better,” Cathi Ford said.

“Life was supposed to be easy for us.”

Born in the Bronx, Ford was 10 when the family moved to Astoria, Queens, where she met Whitey, who lived around the corner. They married in 1951, while he was in the U.S. Army, based in New Jersey.

“She was very proud of him being a baseball player,” her son said. “We used to all get dressed up when we were kids and go to the stadium when he pitched. She loved it. She liked being a celebrity wife, a Yankees wife.”

She never complained as Whitey Ford’s career turned her into a single parent with three children much of the time because he was away for road games for a week or two at time, relatives said. The family moved in 1958 to Lake Success, where she often hosted huge gatherings, from pool parties to breakfast for her son Eddie’s football team of 40-plus members.

She made people feel as if they were the focus of her life, relatives said.

“She wanted to know about each person she met — their life, their success, their stories,” said grandson Eddie Ford, of Long Beach.

Ford encouraged her family to live life when her son Tommy died at age 44 in 1999, and showed her resiliency when her husband died in 2020, followed by her stroke and broken femur in a fall.

Her spirits got a major-league boost when the Yankees invited her a few years ago to its Old-Timers' Day at Yankee Stadium.

“She got all excited and she started exercising and she started strength training just to walk out on the field one day,” her son said. “She was going to see old friends, and she wanted to appear as healthy as possible.”

Besides her son, she is survived by sister Margaret Ann Bartels of Howard Beach, Queens; and eight grandchildren. She was predeceased by daughter Sally Ann Clancy.

A Mass was celebrated Dec. 22 at the Church of St. Mary in Manhasset, followed by burial at Locust Valley Cemetery. Donations may be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.