Photographs by William Taufic.
Joan Melber Warburg has been enriching the lives of women and children in Fairfield County for over fifty years. She joined Family Centers’ board of directors half a century ago and spearheaded the creation of the Family Day Care Program. In 1993, the program was renamed the Joan Melber Warburg Early Childhood Center—a dedication that had more to do with her dedication to the center, not the substantial financial contributions she also has made to Family Centers.
Joan was working with the United Way when her neighbor introduced her to Family Centers in 1961. A mother of four, Joan says, “I found it to be a wonderful agency, not only because of the nursery school, but for the case work they did as well.” Joan served as president from ’63 to ’67 and also was chairman of the Family Day Care Advisory Committee.
Joan was born in Bronxville and married James Warburg, a banker who became an esteemed author and speaker on world affairs. “I’m the only thing that kept my kids from being geniuses,” jokes Joan. While her husband wrote thirty-three books (he died in 1969), Joan kept a prolific pace of her own, churning out hours of volunteer time for various organizations.
A former Girl Scout and president of the student government at Simmons College, Joan’s passion for community service spans her lifetime. She was on the board of Greenwich Country Day School for eleven years. In 1987, she helped found the New York Women’s Foundation, an organization of “women helping women.” Joan is also very involved in the Acting Company, which brings theater to underserved communities all over the country and has been a launching pad for stars like Kevin Kline and Patti LuPone. Each year she opens her estate for the Family ReEntry benefit. A complete list of her civic and charitable work would go on for pages—single-spaced, in a tiny font.
Last year, Joan received the Simmons College Lifetime Achievement Award. In her acceptance speech, Joan shared this anecdote: “My fundraising ability has often been exaggerated, particularly when someone introduced me with the following story: There were two women who were marooned on an island and feared no one would ever find them. One was very worried, but the other was quite optimistic. Finally, the worried one asked the other why she was so optimistic about being found. She replied that she knew Simmons College was having a fund drive, and ‘you can be sure Joan Warburg will find us!’”
Bill Brucker, Communications Director at Family Centers, says, “Certainly, Family Centers is incredibly fortunate to have someone like Joan Warburg on its side. The Greenwich community is even luckier when one considers the number of lives she has touched over the past half-century.”