“That was the most healing and freeing experience,” Ms. Anglund’s daughter, Ms. Harvey, said in a phone interview. “She went to school in Florida, but she was free to walk on the beach and breathe the fresh air and be part of nature.”
Joan benefited too from being removed from the scene of the tragedies and all the reminders of her loved ones.
“Getting away helped her to see that there are always other possibilities,” her daughter said. “You don’t have to stay enclosed in sorrow.”
After the family moved back to Illinois, Ms. Anglund studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the American Academy of Art, also in Chicago. She then worked as a commercial artist for advertising firms.
While still a student, she met Robert Anglund, an actor who was studying at the Goodman School of Drama, now the Theatre School at DePaul University. “When he first kissed me, I just swooned, and I had to sit down,” she said in a 2015 documentary film, “Joan Walsh Anglund: Life in Story and Poem,” by Tim Jackson, a longtime family friend. She and Mr. Anglund married in 1947.
They spent a brief period in Pasadena, Calif., hosting a talk radio show. But radio was rapidly losing ground to television, and they moved back to Illinois. With better prospects for Mr. Anglund in New York, they moved to Manhattan in 1957, and shortly thereafter to suburban Westport, Conn.
In addition to her daughter, Ms. Anglund is survived by two grandchildren and twin great-granddaughters. Her son, Todd Anglund, died in 1992, and her husband in 2009.