A lifelong smoker, she was 71 and had spent the last 12 years working full time as a guide to the mansions of Newport.
“JoAnn was one of the most beloved, interesting people here at the Preservation Society,’’ said Trudy Coxe, chief executive of the Preservation Society of Newport. “She had a great sense of humor. She was never dull, and she always left you laughing.’’
A tall, striking woman whose thick hair went white when she was young, Ms. Blumsack possessed what her husband Hilliard “Huggy’’ Huggins Jr. liked to call “fairy dust.’’
Her second career was as a paid tour guide for the Preservation Society, which allowed her to tap into her natural love of acting, her husband said.
“She had the stage bug in her,’’ he said. “She never really gave the same tour twice. She had a basic script, but she would add and delete things, spice it up. That was her fairy dust; she had a lot of fairy dust.’’
She was born JoAnn Farrell in the small town of Montague in Western Massachusetts. Her parents, Francis and Marion, ran an insurance agency. She grew up in Greenfield and eventually came to Boston to study at Northeastern University, according to her family.
Her first marriage, to Larry Blumsack, ended in divorce after more than 30 years. They ran the gourmet deli Blumsack’s in Coolidge Corner in the 1980s and were known among friends for the New Year’s Day party they held for many years. The party became a seasonal focal point of Democratic town politics, and guests often included US Representative Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest who served in Congress from 1971 to 1981 and fought to impeach President Nixon over the bombing of Cambodia.
Ms. Blumsack was an aide to state Representative John Businger in the 1970s and helped him draft what was later dubbed the Ugly Lib bill and was an early forerunner of laws against age and race discrimination. The bill died in committee.
