Joan M. Howard, senior secretary

Joan Marie Howard, a retired senior secretary at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, died of heart failure Tuesday at Howard County General Hospital. The Jessup resident was 81.

Born at home in Ellicott City and raised on Centennial Lane, she was the daughter of Earl Sheets, a carpenter and construction worker, and his wife, Agnes Manner.

She attended St. Louis School and was a 1955 graduate of Howard High School.

She became a senior secretary at the Johns Hopkins APL and worked there until her retirement in 1991. She later worked at Mercury Computers and at Mid-Atlantic Positioning Systems.

Mrs. Howard enjoyed entertaining her family with fried chicken dinners. She also danced, sang and was a duck-pin bowler. She followed the Baltimore Ravens.

A Mass of Christian burial will be offered at 10 a.m. today at St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church, 3755 St. Paul Street in Ellicott City, where she was a member.

Survivors include a son, Gregory Joseph Howard of Jessup; two daughters, Kimberly Marie Plaskowitz of Columbia and Karen Regina Eby of Catonsville; two brothers, James Sheets of Montana and Thomas Sheets of Westminster; a sister, Carole Price of Arbutus; and a grandson. Her husband of two years, Marlin Mundy, died in 1988.

An earlier marriage to Kenneth Melvin Howard ended in divorce.