Even within their outgoing family, Joe and Anna Trustey — father and daughter — had a gravitational force that drew others to them, whether they were alone or together.
He had a nickname for everyone he knew, she brought a touch of the theatrical to common gestures. Both enlivened conversations with wit that was swift and sure, and both could dip into the fanciful at a moment’s notice. Mr. Trustey might pretend to speak a foreign language with made-up words; his daughter could casually conduct a fake phone call, conjuring and spoofing an imaginary celebrity on the other end.
“You would think you got a line in that would be funny and the end of the conversation, and he would immediately shoot something back,” Kris Trustey said of her husband. Their daughter, she added, “loved to sing and dance. She would belt out songs, thinking the louder she sang, the better she would sound, and she continued doing that right up to the day she died, actually.”
Joseph Francis Trustey and Anna Kathleen Trustey, both of Wenham, died Wednesday evening when the plane he was piloting crashed as it approached Lawrence J. Timmerman Airport in Milwaukee. He was 53, she 18, and they were on a tour visiting potential colleges for her to attend.
For father and daughter, achievements at work and school were only a partial measure of what each wanted to contribute. Andrew Joseph Trustey, who was known as A.J., was the only son among the Trustey children. He had epilepsy and died in his sleep on Oct. 13 at age 22, his mother said. Miss Trustey had prepared a school project, with Livestrong as a model, using wristbands to raise awareness about epilepsy during her senior year.
