Dear Church Family and Friends,
This morning we received news that Joyce Ritchie Henderson died in Virginia where she had moved to be closer to her family. Joyce had been hospitalized recently with a serious heart issue. She returned to her care facility after a few days, but yesterday took a sudden turn for the worse and passed away this morning (April 13). Her son John was able to speak with her on the phone, but because of a rash of Covid-19 cases, he could not visit her in person. I’m comforted by the fact that she was attended by loving and caring doctors and nurses. She was surrounded by the love of her family and the compassion of those at her bed.
Joyce and her husband Jack came to Berea in the last 1960s and joined Union Church in 1970. Joyce served on every board and committee at Union Church, including the search committee that called me as pastor. She was a powerful combination of velvet and steel, down-home sensibility and keen erudition. She was famous for genteel hospitality and for a relentless efficacy in pursuit of projects and goals.
It was Joyce who brought telephone service into Rockcastle County with tireless work and regulatory wrangling. It was Joyce who helped found and power the League of Women Voters here in town. She helped lead the charge for a public library in Madison County, and she joined others in a countless number of public health and civic initiatives. To say the least, there was no moss on the rolling stone of her mind and heart. When she saw a need she could organize, research, and persist until results were achieved.
This was no less true at Union Church than in the wider world. Joyce helped draft Union Church constitutions, institute financial policies, and did her level best to keep at least 6 pastors humbled and ready to serve. Woe to the pastor who did not immediately jump on the moving freight train of her current project (Or, at least so I’m told :))! She was a driving force and very little, least of all age or illness, could blunt her ability to see ways for improvement.
The death of beloved husband Jack in 2000 was a great loss, however, and we join with her family and friends rejoicing that the dynamic duo is at last reunited. Joyce’s faith was strong, practical, and loving, just as she was. She truly loved her neighbor as herself and if she was at times “particular” in her care and concerns, none can ever doubt her willing heart and servant’s soul. With such love, humor, grit, and determination, we were all blessed: from close neighbors to everyone who checks out a book at the library. We can all thank Joyce Henderson for showing us what vibrant faith, a sparkling wit, and loving persistence can bring to glorious flower.
I am personally so grateful for her many insights for and tireless service to Union Church over the decades of our friendship. She loved a good laugh, liked people of spirit and spunk, and could gather people around a cause or a meal with equal grace. She loved people of every station, race, or creed and swept us all into the whirlwind of wit and curiosity and bold action that was the hallmark my experience with her. I will be forever grateful for her role in helping lead me to this place where. I thought then, and think now, that if I could serve with women and men of such caliber as Joyce Henderson I would be a very fortunate man indeed.
We have all been fortunate for having known Joyce. That she has entered a wider life and a deeper peace with God is cause for some sadness, yes, and some joy, too. It is never easy to lose the ones who shape us, yet it is no one’s hope that any suffering should be unnecessarily long. Joyce of all people did not take naturally to infirmity! Now at peace, I doubt Joyce’s spirit is at “rest.” It would not be her way. Her clipboard out, and her pencil in hand, I imagine she is even now discussing much needed improvements in various heavenly affairs, and urging St. Peter to please oil those pearly gates. Standards, people, standards!
In sorrow and joy and thanksgiving,
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