Carly Simon lost both of her sisters to cancer this week.
The 78-year-old singer is grieving after Broadway songwriter Lucy Simon died following a battle with breast cancer just a day after former opera singer Joanna Simon lost her fight with thyroid cancer.
Both deaths – Lucy was 82, while Joanna was 85 – have been confirmed by a source close to Carly, though she has yet to comment publicly on the losses.
Carly, Lucy and Joanna were born in New York to parents Richard L. Simon, founder of the Simon Schuster publishing house, and his wife Andrea, a civil rights activist and singer.
In the early 1960s, Lucy and Carly formed their own popular singing duo called The Simon Sisters.
Although both had solo careers, Lucy later enjoyed success as a songwriter for the Broadway musical ‘The Secret Garden’ in 1991, for which she earned a Tony nomination.
He went on to score for the stage adaptation of ‘Doctor Zhivago’ and the HBO movie ‘The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom.’
Before his illness progressed, he had been working on ‘On Cedar Street’, a musical adaptation of the 2015 novel ‘Our Souls At Night’.
In 1962, Joanna made her New York City Opera debut as Mozart’s Cherubino and went on to perform on stage with the New York Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
He then worked as an art correspondent for PBS’s ‘MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour’ until 1992, and then worked in real estate.
Lucy and Joanna predeceased their brother, photographer Peter Simon, who died of cardiac arrest aged 71 in 2018 after undergoing treatment for cancer.
