News
Victoria T. "Vicki" Joseph, attorney, playwright and newly-elected Alpha-1 Foundation board member, dies of lung transplant rejection
Victoria “Vicki” T. Joseph, an Alpha who had two of her plays performed for the first time this year and was recently elected to the board of the Alpha-1 Foundation, died Aug. 2.
Joseph, 54, who had undergone a lung transplant as a result of her chronic lung disease related to Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, died from chronic rejection of her transplanted lungs, exacerbated by pneumonia and possibly another infection.
She died at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, OH, where she had received her double lung transplant in November of 2006.
She is survived by her husband, David Brown of Agawam, MA, father Victor, brother Stephen, and stepdaughters Harriet and Alexa.
“Vicki packed three successful careers into her short life and was taking confident steps into a fourth at the time of her death,” said her husband.
Born on April 7, 1955, Joseph’s first career was as a librarian at Springfield (MA) City Library. She then got a law degree, passed the bar and entered private practice as a criminal defense attorney.
In her final year of law school a local attorney who had committed to teaching a Business Law course at Elms College tired of the course and agreed to pay her for her time if she would teach it for him.
“I walked into a classroom at the Elms, a place I knew well, and began teaching. Then, suddenly, it all came together,” she said. “The law, the storytelling, the fun I’d always sought from my work, was all there. And so, an adjunct (part-time) college professor was born.”
Eventually, she gave up her law practice and became a full-time faculty member of Elms College.
Soon after, she was diagnosed with Alpha-1 lung disease. When she could no longer teach in the classroom, she continued teaching online until she was given her second chance with the double lung transplant.
Transplant doctors advised her against returning to teaching, so she rejoined Elms College as an administrator, quickly becoming Associate Academic Dean for Continuing Education.
Encouraged by her family, she resigned in early 2009 to pursue a full-time freelance writing career. Some of her early playwriting successes were recounted in a profile of her in the spring issue of Alpha-1-to-One magazine.
In April, one of her short plays was included in the anthology “And Justice for All” by the South Camden Theatre Company of New Jersey. Then in June a shortened version of her full-length play “Inhale,” drawing on her life with Alpha-1 lung disease, was performed in the 12th Annual Black Box New Play Festival of the Gallery Players Theater, Brooklyn.
At her death she left two unfinished novels and plays, as well as stories, essays, and plans for a book on “Alpha People” – how Alpha-1 affects the lives of those born with it and how they cope.
Just this spring, she was elected to the board of the Alpha-1 Foundation.
A memorial mass will be held at St Anthony Maronite Church, 375 Island Pond Road, Springfield, MA, on Sunday Sept. 20, at 10:30 a.m.
A celebration of her life and achievement is to be organized by her family and Elms College.
