Joshua Jonathan Emery Blau
1968-2025
Joshua Jonathan Emery Blau passed away from kidney cancer in Santa Barbara, California, on July 23, 2025. He was surrounded by the family who adored him.
Josh was born in 1968 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his father, Dr. Sheridan Blau (Professor Emeritus, Columbia University), had his first teaching position. He had two older sisters, Rebecca and Jessica. When Josh was two, Sheridan took a position in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He and his then-wife, the artist, Bonnie Blau, moved the family west.
As a little kid, Josh drove the neighbors mad, zooming his noisy Big Wheel down the sidewalk at post-pedestrian speeds and then dumping the orange and yellow plastic vehicle in random driveways where unsuspecting drivers would find it blocking their garage. His favorite place to visit was the Strawberry Patch, which was across a busy four-lane road. Riding low on that Big Wheel, he was once discovered at the road’s edge, calmly waiting for the traffic to clear.
Josh’s relentless quest for new terrain never vanished, and he frequently roamed off from the family who would get on their bikes and ride up and down the streets calling for him. He was often found high up a eucalyptus tree, or deep in the lemon orchard that abutted his childhood home. He was dropped off at the UCSB police station at age three, after a woman who had taken the wandering child out for ice cream had finally decided to return him. His appearance at the police station wasn’t reported to the family immediately as the officer in charge thought he was saying his name was Sven. In fact, he was reporting his name was “Seven,” as Josh had renamed himself after his favorite people, numbers, and characters on Sesame Street. For years, if you asked him what his name was, he would say, “Joshua Johnathan Emery Ernie Bert Dug-Dug Gordon Susan Seven Six Blau.”
Josh was a polymath and his interests ran from literature, to art, to architecture, to history, to politics, to pop culture. He loved a good pop song, and could defend Justin Timberlake or Olivia Rodrigo to any band snob. Josh sang and danced in musical theater at Dos Pueblos High School and in the Santa Barbara Youth Theater. He continued to sing show tunes as an adult with his now 13-year-old daughter, Sonia—his greatest joy— who is also involved in musical theater.
After a gap year in France where he earned a French Baccalauréat, Josh went to Haverford College where he ran the film club and studied Urban Development. By his third year, Josh had tired of the classroom and decided to leave for a semester in Guatemala, where he enrolled in a three-month Spanish course. He was fluent after only a month, and so he took off to explore Central America, El Salvador in particular, where there was a civil war. Josh wrote a letter to his parents to tell them where he was going, but failed to drop it in a post box. As he hitchhiked, rode buses, and walked to El Salvador, his family desperately searched for him, just as they had when he was a little boy. Eventually, Josh turned up at the American Express office in Costa Rica, where he received one of many messages his parents had sent to every American Express office in Central America.
By the time he joined the United States Foreign Service, Josh was speaking four languages. He quickly added Portuguese and was placed in the American Consulate in Rio de Janeiro where he lived with his future husband, architect and designer, Alex Augusto Suárez. Following the Foreign Service, Josh went to work in international television. He was an executive at Fox Latin America and Fox Europe and lived with his husband in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Istanbul (where he learned to speak Turkish), Paris, and Barcelona. When their daughter, Sonia Juliette, was born, Josh and Alex moved permanently to Amsterdam where Josh picked up his next fluent language.
Wherever they lived, Josh and Alex loved having family and friends visit. If Josh loved something, he wanted you to love it too, and he would give you any book or re-watch any show just to experience your happiness in discovering something that had brought him joy. One of his greatest frustrations in being sick was that he lost the strength to tour visitors all over Amsterdam, showing them— with the enthusiasm of a zealot—his favorite open market, museum, cheese shop, croissant shop, canal, bike ride, and café.
Josh was a leader in his field and worked easily with people in any language. Aside from work, family, friends, and his beloved daughter, traveling was Josh’s greatest love. He’d rather have spent money on experiences than things. Together, Josh and Alex visited every continent except Australia and Antarctica, and most major cities in the world. None of it was for show or ever posted on social media. These trips were about the authentic experience of seeing places, understanding the history and politics of each country, taking in the art, eating new foods, walking interesting streets, and getting to know new people. Josh was a true citizen of the world and felt at ease everywhere from Thailand, to Japan, to Peru, to Israel, to Jordan, to Spain, to Panama, to Morocco. Josh was
planning trips with his husband and daughter even in the final stages of his illness, with the hope that something might change and they could catch a flight to a place they hadn’t yet seen.
When the doctors lost hope (though Josh still held on to the belief he might live a little longer), Josh and his family flew to Santa Barbara where he wished to die. He asked his parents, sisters, nieces and nephews to be with him for his last days. He loved the ocean and was often called Dolphin Boy, so the extended family gathered in a home with windows that looked out to the sea. Even in his final weeks, Josh resisted giving in or giving up. He danced to George Michael; sang the entire soundtrack of Sound of Music one night; watched his daughter do TikTok dances; cried and laughed with his family and closest friends who visited; and continued to criticize whomever had loaded the dishwasher “the wrong way!”
Josh handed out as many nicknames as he’d had as a kid. Over the last few weeks of his illness, he used all those nicknames as he told every person he spoke to—even when he couldn’t open his eyes—that he loved them. He sent this text to a friend who was across the world and couldn’t make it to California: “[I’m] staying in the mind frame of gratitude: about life, my loved ones, the amazing life I’ve lived, the happiness I’ve had, the pain I’ve not had.”
Josh is survived by his partner and husband of 30 years Alex Augusto Suárez and his daughter Sonia Juliette Blau Siegal of Amsterdam; his mother Bonnie Blau of Santa Barbara; his father Sheridan Blau and his father’s partner Cheryl Hogue Smith of New York City; his sisters Rebecca Summers of Santa Barbara and Jessica Anya Blau of New York City; his nephews and nieces Satchel, Shiloh, and Hannah Summers of San Diego; and Madeline Tavis and Ella Grossbach of Brooklyn.
The world may appear the same without Josh, but for those who knew him, it never will be. Each new country, each surprising taste, each hour getting lost in an unknown city, and each moment of shared wonder will forever echo with the thought: Josh would have loved this.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Josh’s memory can be made to The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
