Joan Steinberg was a lifelong contrarian whose vantage point unwittingly put her at the forefront of many trends, from settling in Northern Maine in 1973 and opening what one newspaper heralded as the first macrobiotic restaurant in the state, to moving to Peaks Island decades before it became a millionaires’ Mecca. She died Monday, August 3, 2026,at the age of 76. 

Born on November 11, 1949, in Norwalk, Connecticut, to Suzanne and Clifford Steinberg of Wilton, Connecticut, she is survived by two younger brothers, William of Toronto and Daniel of Wilton, her son Joshua, his wife, Sarah, and her grandchildren, Madeline, 10, and Caleb, 6, of Winchester, MA.

Joan rebelled at an early age, a Jewish teen getting a nose job, wearing her hair below her waist and listening to The Beatles and other “revolutionary” musicians. With a degree from Boston University in math and a minor education, in 1973, she and her first husband rejected everything about their upbringings. They literally planted roots in Orono, Maine when Joan was seven months pregnant with her first child. Joshua was born two days after they crossed the border, two months premature. Joan drove her breastmilk nearly a half hour each way to his incubator at the NICU in Bangor. She went on to start the macrobiotic restaurant with her husband, Gene Fialkoff. After their divorce, she met the man who would become her second husband, Rob Johnston, Jr.

A lifelong gardener, Joan played an instrumental role with Rob in the founding of Johnny’s Selected Seeds, one of the premier organic-seed companies. After Joan and Rob’s 9-month-old son, Alex, died of SIDS, Joan again divorced, forging her own path out of intense darkness. In 1979, Joan and Joshua moved to Portland, and then to Peaks Island in 1981, a place where a single woman could afford to buy a home, if she and her eight-year-old son took the ferry from Portland each weekend to rip apart walls insulated with newspaper from 1904 and rely only on their neighbors’ toilet.

She built a community of lifelong friends who shared her counter-culture beliefs. For years, she hosted a New Year’s Day party open to all, routinely attracting more than a hundred people. She met her third husband, Russell Burleigh, who became the love of her life, marrying at the Fifth Maine on Peaks in 1993. The couple moved to Portland and then designed their own home in Scarborough, where they lived for many years. Joan loved being at the center of a life filled with classical music blaring from the living room, as Russ, a former executive director of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, and later, the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ, often hosted visiting musicians in their home. Russ and Joan would hold court at F. Parker Reidy's with guests who headlined Maine musical and artistic events.

After retiring as a computer programmer, Joan returned to her first profession, as a Scarborough Public Schools substitute teacher, a quick walk from her and Russ’ home. A few years after Russ died in 2021, she started to see her memory decline. She would point out that she maintained her record of completing New York Times crossword puzzles, even the Saturday edition, in a few hours. One day she announced she had resigned herself to moving to Massachusetts and assisted living. Her anti-authoritarian tendencies came too. Even as dementia progressed, Joan's fiercely independent spirit stayed strong. Life in assisted living often put her at odds with rules and routines she had resisted all her life.

Between stays in care communities, she spent several months living with Joshua and Sarah, cherishing the opportunity to spend time with her grandchildren. She delighted in telling Madeline and Caleb that instead of buying fashionable ripped jeans, she simply made her own. For decades, she told people how much she disliked hospitals and other institutions and how she wanted to die in hospice. Yesterday afternoon, her favorite Bach rhapsodies played in her hospice room as she lost her battle against dementia. It may be the only authoritarian in her life which did not yield to her protests. 

Funeral Services are private.