John Marion Baldessari

Feb 2, 1930 -

Jan 21, 2022

On Jan. 21, 2022, longtime Anchorage, Alaska, resident John M. Baldessari passed away peacefully at Aspen Creek Senior Living center in Anchorage.

John was the youngest of three children born in Denver, Colo., to parents Domenico Giovanni Baldessari and Maria Barbara Mattivi, both emigrants to the United States from their respective villages of Albiano and Bedollo, located near the city of Trento in the "Dolomite" region of the Tyrolean Alps, northern Italy. He was raised in Denver, along with his two older siblings, Lee John and Emma Margaret.

John initially attended college following his graduation from Holy Family High School, Denver in 1948, but left to serve in the U.S. Army during the Korean War from Sept. 22, 1952, to Sept. 12, 1954, stationed at Ft. Holabird in Baltimore, Md. At the end of the war, John returned to school and obtained his B.A. in geology from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1958.

Following college, John worked for the United States Geographical Survey Topographic Department in Colorado. In June 1959, John relocated to Alaska, pursuing a job opportunity as a cartographic aid with the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM). He served in that position for the next two years, and then transferred to a position as a land surveyor with the BLM, serving in that capacity until his retirement in 1992. In the decades of his career with the BLM, John traveled extensively throughout the state of Alaska, surveying and mapping in the Yukon and Kuskokwim river basins of western Alaska, the Brooks Range and North Slope Borough, Kodiak Island and many other remote and uninhabited regions of the Alaska frontier.

In March 1962, John met Joan Marie Dahm, a registered nurse teaching at Anchorage Community College. They began dating and were engaged shortly before the Good Friday earthquake of 1964. The couple were married at Joan's home parish of Sacred Heart Church in Early, Iowa, on Dec. 28, 1964. The newlyweds returned to Alaska from Iowa in January 1965, traversing over 3,000 road miles in John's VW Beetle, first to Prince Rupert, B.C., then taking the ferry to Haines, Alaska, and finally completing the drive to Anchorage via the Glenn Highway.

John and Joan made their home in Anchorage and began raising four children together: John Joseph, Daniel James, Samuel Mark and Ann Margaret. Following Joan's untimely death from cancer on Sept. 26, 1979, John remained in Anchorage and continued to raise his family as a single father. He retired from the BLM in December 1992, and lived at the family home until August 2021, when he relocated to Aspen Creek senior living center.

John was preceded in death by parents, Domenico and Maria; brother, Lee (Jaqueline) Baldessari; sister, Emma (Don) Beam; and wife, Joan. He is survived by four children, 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren: son, John (Donna) Baldessari and their children Anthony, Marie, June, Katherine and Genevieve; son, Daniel Baldessari; son, Samuel (Carolyn) Baldessari and their children Joseph, Stella, Thomas and Anne; and daughter, Ann (Karl) Zapf and their children Gabriel, Simon, Aengus and Margaret.

Honest, intelligent, personable and humorous, John will be remembered and greatly missed by his family, friends and all others who had the honor to know and share in his life.

On Feb. 2, 2022, a viewing and rosary will be held at 1 p.m., followed by a funeral mass at 2 p.m., at Our Lady of Guadalupe Cathedral, 3900 Wisconsin Street in Anchorage, with reception to follow. His family requests that flowers be sent directly to Janssen Funeral Homes in Anchorage, or alternately please consider a monetary donation to Catholic Social Services Alaska.