My cousin, Joan Lind Van Blom, died last week at her home in Long Beach, California. Her dad, Tom Lind, was my father’s brother.

We were never close. She was six years younger, an age difference which seems meaningless now but put us in different worlds when I would visit our Long Beach family back when I was growing up.

But she was my famous cousin, and we followed her career with great interest and with pride.

Here’s a capsule from the much longer obituary that appeared in her local newspaper, the Long Beach Press-Telegram, (“Long Beach’s Joan Van Blom, rowing legend, dies of brain cancer at 62“).

Joan Van Blom, widely considered the greatest female athlete to compete in the sport of rowing, died Friday in her Long Beach home after a battle with brain cancer. She was 62.

Van Blom, also a longtime educator in Long Beach, had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma multiforme.

“There won’t ever be enough space in the newspaper to write all the things that should be written about her,” said Van Blom’s friend and co-worker, Lisa Ulmer.

An inductee of the Wilson, Long Beach State, Century Club, and National Rowing halls of fame, Van Blom was the first U.S. woman to win an Olympic medal in rowing after taking the silver in Montreal in 1976, and silvered again in 1984. She was on the Olympic team in 1980 and was the favorite to win the gold that year, but the U.S. delegation boycotted the Moscow Games.

She was the top single sculler in America for nearly a decade and won 14 national titles during her career. The then-Joan Lind married coach and Hall of Famer John Van Blom in 1984, and for the last three decades the pair have enjoyed the title of the First Couple of Rowing.

Do a quick online search and you’ll see the tributes that have appeared. Also from Long Beach, an obit from Gazettes.com (“A Tribute to Joan Lind Van Blom“), and a very long piece from USRowing (“In Memory of Joan Lind Van Blom”).

The latter is especially moving, coming from her colleagues and competitors in the rowing community.

Anyway, aloha, Joan.