Actress Carly Simon Loses Both Sisters to Cancer, Lucy Simon, Joanna Simon Die One Day Apart

 

Actress Carly Simon with sisters Lucy Simon, Joanna Simon 

One day apart from one another, Carly Simon, a musician, lost both of her sisters, Joanna and Lucy, to cancer. At the age of 82, Lucy passed away from metastatic breast cancer at her Piermont, New York, home.

Lucy was well-known throughout her life and career as a composer on Broadway. The eldest sister and well-known opera soprano, Joanna, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 85 due to thyroid cancer, according to the New York Times.

For her contributions to the long-running musical "The Secret Garden," Lucy Simon received a Tony nomination for Original Score during her time on Broadway. She and Carly Simon were a folk duo known as the Simon Sisters in Provincetown, Massachusetts before she began writing music.

 

In 1964, their song "Wynken, Blynken & Nod" peaked at No. 73 on the Billboard Hot 100. For "In Harmony," which they recorded together, Lucy Simon and David Levine earned a Grammy in 1981 for Best Recording for Children. For the album's follow-up, they won the prize once again in 1983.

More recently, Lucy Simon contributed to the "On Cedar Street" musical, which was based on the 2015 novel "Our Souls at Night," with Victoria Clark serving as director.

However, Lucy Simon was forced to leave the production due to her struggle with cancer. Her family includes her husband, David, daughter Julie and ex-husband Christopher Knight, sister Carly, and grandchildren Sophie, Ben, Charlie, and Evie.

When Joanna Simon made her theatrical debut as Mozart's Cherubino at the New York City Opera in 1962, she began appearing often on opera and concert stages. She performed the title role in the Seattle Opera's world premiere of Thomas Pasatieri's "Black Widow" in 1972, and she played Pelagia in the world premiere of Robert Starer's "The Last Lover" at the Caramoor Music Festival in 1975. 

She sang with the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, among other orchestras, throughout the course of her singing career, which lasted until 1986.

Joanna continued her career in journalism after quitting music, serving as an arts reporter for PBS's "MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour" until 1992. In 1991, she received an Emmy for her story on the relationship between creativity and bipolar disease. She had relationships with Walter Cronkite from 2005 until his death in 2009 and Gerald Walker, a writer and journalist, from 1976 until his death in 2004.

The deaths of Lucy and Joanna Simon come after that of Peter Simon, the youngest of the four siblings and a photographer. After battling cancer, he passed away from a cardiac attack in 2018 at the age of 71.