Stratton’s mother dead at 88

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Schenectady Mayor Brian U. Stratton’s mother Joan died Monday as she had lived — calmly and without complaint.

At her apartment in Chevy Chase, Md., near the Washington suburb where she moved her five children when her husband was elected to Congress, 88-year-old Joan Stratton welcomed her children one last time, then quietly passed away in the early morning hours, Mayor Stratton said.

He described his mother as the unsung hero behind her husband’s public service. She raised a large family, moved from one state to another as her husband rose from Schenectady’s mayor to congressman and kept the household running so Rep. Samuel S. Stratton could focus on politics.

“Without her, my father would never have been able to do the things he did, professionally and politically,” said Stratton, the youngest of the family’s children. “He was so focused on what he had to do — Mom was there for school functions, to help us with our homework, all of that. She was the rock of our family.”

And she did it with grace.

“She was a very remarkable, calm, collected woman with a lot on her plate,” said her friend, Harriet Murphy, whose husband was a close political ally of Sam Stratton. “My own husband ran for office, and I think if he’d been elected, I’d have gone crazy. But she did it with five children.”

Joan didn’t even blink when her husband, then city mayor, told her he planned to trick the city police into raiding a gambling den that he believed they were deliberately allowing to operate. The event became a turning point in Sam Stratton’s career, helping launch him into a campaign for Congress. But at the time, it seemed a risky move.

“We went home and sat up in bed and called each other, waiting for word,” Murphy recalled.

Joan, she said, was calm. But Murphy was so worried about her husband — who had gone along with Stratton on the raid — that she was frightened by the sound of The New York Times hitting the porch early that morning.

She called Joan to report the scare. Joan laughed gently and counseled patience.

Both husbands eventually called from City Hall later that morning, when they thought their wives would be awake. They had assumed that the women were sound asleep all night, Murphy said.

Joan’s composure during the 12-hour wait left Murphy impressed. “She was a lovely lady.”

Joan Stratton remained active until the end, taking the subway to visit her mayor son whenever he came to Washington, D.C., to lobby for Schenectady.

Unlike Stratton’s father, who died just before Stratton became a political success, his mother was able to celebrate his wins, including his record-breaking 2007 election in which he won 71 percent of the vote.

“She was very proud of me,” Stratton recalled. “We had a lot of fun together.”

He hurried to Chevy Chase last weekend to be at his mother’s side before her death. He got there in time for her to realize he was present and he sat with her, holding her hand, in the final days.

His sister and brother, Debra Mott and Kevin Stratton, who live nearby, were also present.

The rest of the family was gathering on Tuesday, and the mayor will spend the week in Maryland as they plan the funeral and wind down their mother’s affairs. Her memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday at St. John’s United Methodist Church in Springfield, Va.

She was born in Port Marnock, Ireland, just outside Dublin, on May 5, 1921.

She met her husband in 1946, when Sam Stratton served as deputy secretary-general of the Far East Commission in the State Department.

Then Joan Harris, she was working at the Indian Embassy. She had immigrated to the U.S. just five years earlier when her father moved from Ireland to Washington, D.C., to work for the British Treasury under the Lend-Lease Program of World War II.

They were married in Washington on Dec. 17, 1947. Sam Stratton died in 1990.