Joyce Meyer Schmitz

Joyce Meyer Schmitz of Potomac, Maryland, died peacefully in Richfield, Ohio, August 8, 2020, one day before her 87th birthday after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.  Joyce was born in Inglewood, California, and graduated from Inglewood High School in 1951. She graduated in 1955 with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of California at Berkeley.  In the early 1970s, she completed a master’s degree in education at Western Connecticut College.

Joyce followed her husband’s career and moved from California to White Plains, New York, before moving overseas to West Germany in 1964. The years in West Germany were very special to her, and she made lifelong friends and learned to speak German. The move to Connecticut in 1969 was highlighted by a cruise across the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth II. In 1973, she moved to Potomac, Maryland, where she lived until 2016, when she moved to a memory care facility in Richfield, Ohio near her daughter, Betsy.

An elementary school teacher for decades, Joyce was loved by her students. She taught in Berkeley, California; Hahn Air Base in Kirchberg, Germany; the American School on the Rhine in Bonn, Germany; and at Lone Oak Elementary School and Wayside Elementary School in Montgomery County, Maryland. She also was a loyal supporter of the John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles, California, which supported her when she learned her oldest daughter was deaf.

Joyce had a distinctive personality:  she was reserved, but polite when meeting people, but once you were her friend, she was devoted to you. She had a dry wit and loved to laugh. She also never colored her hair, sporting a silver bob most of her life. The Talbot’s outlet was her favorite clothing store. She loved cats and dogs and shared her life for 19 years with a tabby cat named Lola. In her last years, she was comforted by her daughter Betsy’s Siberian huskies.

Joyce is predeceased by her younger daughter, Elizabeth (Betsy) Schmitz Marchetta (husband, Vincent Marchetta and grandchildren, Amanda and William) and survived by her loving husband of 59 years, Herbert K. Schmitz, her oldest daughter, Kathryn L. Schmitz (granddaughter, Vivian), her son, Michael R. Schmitz (wife, Elizabeth and grandsons, Michael and Thomas), and her sister, Rebecca Grayson.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Joyce’s memory may be made to the John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles, CA, the Alzheimer’s Association, or the International Student House in Washington, DC. Memorial arrangements are pending due to COVID-19.

Services in care of Billow Funeral Homes and Crematory, Fairlawn Chapel  85 N. Miller Road  Akron, OH  44333

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