Joyce Fay Pirtle Foltz's Obituary
Joyce Fay Pirtle Foltz was born January 11, 1938 in Mounds, Illinois, the fourth of six children of Thomas Olen Pirtle and Hazel Beatrice Boren Pirtle. As a child, she was sweet, quiet and reserved, a peacemaker in the family. Her father’s death when she was 13 years old affected her deeply. Olen’s passing also sent the family’s finances into a tailspin, so at age 14, still in high school, Joyce joined her mother and her older siblings in working to help support the family.
Joyce had a beautiful singing voice and could harmonize to anything. Unfortunately stage fright kept her from performing very often, though she loved to sing in the car on road trips. She was athletic and a bit of a tomboy, playing pitcher for the girls softball team, and as a teenager could identify any car on the road by make, model, and year.
At 17, she met Alva (Al) Ray Foltz, an Army paratrooper. Joyce and Al married on September 22, 1956, after Joyce finished high school and Al completed his Army service. They welcomed daughter Lori Fay in October of 1957.
But soon things changed. In January of 1960, right around her 22nd birthday, Joyce began having unusual symptoms and was diagnosed and hospitalized with Multiple Sclerosis. She became completely paralyzed and unable to speak or move. Not much was known about the disease then and she was not expected to live, but the doctors tried steroid therapy, experimental at the time, and she responded well. With physical therapy, Joyce gradually relearned how to crawl and then walk, and she was well enough to be reunited with her husband and daughter in the spring of that year.
In 1967, the family moved to Luling, Louisiana. Despite occasional minor MS relapses, Joyce lived the life of a normal suburban 1960s housewife: making friends, going to church, helping lead Lori’s Girl Scout troop, and playing bridge. When Lori left for college in 1975, Joyce began working at the River Parishes Guide, her first outside employment since her MS diagnosis.
But her marriage to Al was deteriorating, and when it ended in 1981, Joyce moved to the outskirts of St. Louis, Missouri to be near her siblings. Within a year, she and Logan Hollandsworth met, fell in love and moved in together. After completing secretarial school through vocational rehabilitation, she began working as an administrative assistant at the Regional Commerce and Growth Association in downtown St. Louis. Joyce and Logan had a happy life together for many years, enjoying dancing, boating, fishing, and spending time with friends until his health began to decline and she became his caregiver. Joyce’s MS also slowly advanced to the point that she had to take disability retirement in 1994. They continued to live together independently, both of them resorting to wheelchairs to get around.
When Logan died in 1997, Joyce’s daughter Lori invited her to live with her family in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Even from her wheelchair, Joyce was an active and contributing member of the family, using her administrative skills in Lori’s grant consulting business, helping with childcare, and being of whatever help she could. When Lori and Michael’s youngest daughter was born in 1999, Joyce was like a second mother to the baby, taking care of her during the day so that Lori could work.
In 2000, the family moved to New Jersey, first to Bound Brook and then a few years later to Hightstown. Joyce had a setback when she lost sight in one eye and the surgery put her in a major MS exacerbation, but she continued to contribute to the family as much as she was able. Unfortunately, her MS gradually progressed, and in 2017, after a series of life-threatening infections and hospitalizations, she made the choice to enter Preferred Care of Hamilton, a nursing home 10 minutes away, where her health improved under their expert nursing care. In typical fashion, Joyce made the most of her life there, going to bingo, raiding the vending machines, playing solitaire, keeping in touch with friends on Facebook, making friends with her roommates and caregivers, and enjoying frequent visits from Lori and her husband Michael as well as her granddaughters Brianne, Genevieve and Caroline, Caroline’s husband Jake, and her great-grandchildren Lyla, Viggo, and Ellie, as well as family friends. She was even able to go out to restaurants on special occasions.
In spring of 2020, Lori and Michael sold their 5-bedroom house in NJ and moved to Virginia to be near their daughter Caroline and her family. With COVID raging, visits to Joyce were prohibited. The entire family did their best to stay in contact with her, first by phone calls and video visits and later, once vaccines made it possible, with in-person visits. Finally, in September of 2022, after two long years of fighting red tape and waiting lists, Joyce was successfully moved to Potomac Falls Nursing and Rehab in Sterling, VA, a short drive from her family. With COVID restrictions relaxed, she again enjoyed visits from her family, her niece Julie Pirtle, and family friend Tracy Wells who came down from New Jersey. She also enjoyed frequent phone calls with her surviving sister Nancy Swanson.
But COVID, MS, and other health issues had taken their toll. Joyce was bedridden and rapidly losing sight in her one good eye. Her family was called to her bedside on April 20,2023 when she became unresponsive and her vitals started fading. But she awoke a few hours later, calm and lucid, and her vitals began to improve. It looked like the crisis was over. Then, in the early hours of Saturday morning, April 22, Joyce passed away quietly in her sleep, as though she didn’t want to cause a fuss.
Joyce will be remembered as a kind-hearted, generous, helpful, unassuming, and loving soul with a sly and sassy sense of humor and a tiny bit of an edge on occasion. But most importantly, she was, as her ex-husband Al said long after their divorce, “the most courageous person I have ever known.” She never gave in to self-pity, and never looked for it from others despite the many, many hardships and blows life had dealt her. She bore her disability with grace and courage, and she worked hard to make sure that the disease that she lived with for 63 years did not define her as a person. And in a final act of generosity, she donated her brain and spinal tissue to the University of Maryland Medical School to be used in MS research.
Joyce was predeceased by her grandparents, Edward and Nancy Alice Cavaness Boren and Susan Almedia Stafford Pirtle; her parents, Thomas Olen Pirtle and Hazel Beatrice Boren Pirtle; her brothers James Pirtle and Robert Pirtle and her sister Mary Alice Pirtle Martin; her former husband Al Foltz, and her longtime love Logan Hollandsworth. She is survived by her sister Nancy Swanson and her brother Dennis Pirtle (wife Joyce), sister-in-laws Vivian Pirtle and Georgette Pirtle-Larcombe, brother-in-law Kenneth Martin, daughter Lori Foltz Fabian and son-in-law Michael Fabian, granddaughters Brianne Fabian (husband Dan Hershey), Caroline Fabian Mercurio (husband Jake Mercurio), and Genevieve Fabian; great-granddaughters Lyla Hershey and Eliana Fae Mercurio, and great-grandson Viggo Hershey, as well as many beloved nieces and nephews.
The family would like to extend special thanks to those dedicated individuals who provided care and support to Joyce over the years, especially home health aides Joy and TeeCee; Preferred Care of Hamilton staff, especially Alison, Bernadette, Coleen, and Lisa; and the administrative, medical, and caregiving staff of Potomac Falls Nursing and Rehab.
Memorial arrangements and disposition of ashes will be arranged at a later date. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to your local chapter of the MS society to provide direct assistance to people living with MS, https://www.nationalmssociety.org/Chapters. If you would like to support MS research through a donation to the University of Maryland Brain and Tissue Bank, please contact Lori Fabian directly for more information.
Joyce touched many lives with her warmth, her wit, her tireless devotion, her grace under fire, and the love she showered on those around her. Whenever anyone was getting ready to leave and said, “Love you” to her, she always smiled and replied, “Love you more.” And she was right.
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