Joan Delores Sweeney

Joan Delores Sweeney, 93, of Chicago, Illinois, passed away peacefully on September 20, 2023, at Brentwood of Niles assisted living facility.

A Celebration of Life memorial will be held at Sidetrack Chicago, 3349 N Halsted Street, Chicago, IL 60657 in the near future. Details will be made on Facebook and through direct contact. Being an ardent animal lover, memorial contributions may be made to PAWS Chicago at https://www.pawschicago.org/how-to-help/donate in Joan’s memory. Online condolences accepted at www.PikeFH.com.

Joan was born on October 12, 1929, in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of the late Eugene and Louise (DeRuntz) Kinney. Joan attended Gage Park High School and briefly studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. She married Walter Edens in 1949, had two daughters, Kathleen and Jacqueline, moving to the St. Tarcissus parish in the Norwood Park East neighborhood in 1956 where she lived until September of 2021. After a divorce, Joan found love again and married Clarence J. Sweeney Jr. in 1972. Joan worked in a creative position at Dorothy Flicek, in sales at Foyers, an upscale women’s clothing store, and supervisory positions at Fixler Badger and Switchcraft, manufacturing companies. Her most fulfilling and treasured job was working in the finance area for Arthur and Pepe, the owners of Sidetrack, a gay club/music video bar drawing a diverse crowd in Chicago’s Boys Town, where she worked for over twenty years. It is there that she found purpose and an extended family, not to mention loads of fun and adventures.

Joan was a one-of-a-kind wonderful, supportive mother who raised Kathy and Jackie with a stern, yet loving hand. She was selfless and hardworking, often juggling three jobs to ensure her daughters had a good education and a secure home life. Joan was joyful, always making lemonade out of the lemons life often handed her. She was a loving mother, daughter, wife, sister-in-law, aunt. loyal friend to many, a mentor to neighborhood kids, Girl Scout leader, and a supportive and fun-loving co-worker.

To know Joan was to love her; and she was loved by many and will be missed greatly. The world was a better place with Joan in it, and those two-legged and four- legged beings who knew her, whose lives she touched in incredible ways, no matter the length of time, were blessed indeed.

Survivors include her daughters: Kathleen Edens, Jacqueline Edens, stepdaughter Patricia Sweeney-Becker, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, many nieces and nephews and an extensive network of extended family members and friends. 

Joan was also preceded in death by her husbands: Walter Edens and Clarence Sweeney Jr., and a sister, LaVerne Robinson.