Joy B. Williams, a resident of Far Rockaway, New York, expired on Friday, February 19, 2010.  She was born in Tuskegee, AL, the youngest daughter of Mack Williams and Katie Cox-Williams, to which union was born 12 other children: Benjamin, Alex, Audria, Pinkie, Booker T., Calvin, James, Mack Jr., Marthena, Ethel, Robert, and Chester.  Aunt Joy is survived by two siblings, Ethel Lois Tarver of Birmingham, AL and brother, Robert Williams of Detroit, MI.

 After a tragic fire ripped through and instantly destroyed the family home, and the untimely, devastating back-to-back deaths of her parents, Joy joined her older sister, Pinkie, in the coal fields in and around Valls Creek, West Virginia, where she went to grade and high schools.  Following the opportunity trail for work, she would move with her to Akron, Ohio: Pinkie, that sister she was as close to as another sister could be without being her daughter.  So much so, it was her choice to purchase a burial plot in which to bury her remains as near to hers as possible.  Providentially, there was one waiting just for her, right next to Aunt Pinkie’s.  Lying there beside each other, as they had done so many years on Wooster and up on Greenwood, they are surely having a great reunion.  If it is anything like those old days, we can only be sympathetic to those around them: I mean, all that unrestrained jubilant laughter going on.  Family folks can hear it now.

 Joy learned the values of industry and hard work from Aunt Pinkie, and from the Williams’ family tradition, in general -- in whose proud loins she never failed to reference.  She had early aspirations of becoming an attorney, but not having the financial resources to pursue that career, she would embark upon another in the medical field – that of an X-Ray technologist.  She went to, and graduating from, schools in this profession in Chicago and Detroit. 

 She was influenced by a consortium of competent physicians, laboratory professionals, and a wide-ranging corps of medical peers so as to hone her skills and development.  She would practice her untrained law profession degree on the rest of the family and politicians with whom she didn’t agree, sometimes keeping us in stitches with her summations and verdicts – the family, that is.

 Aunt Joy would leave Detroit and go to New York, where she worked until her retirement, only to begin, yet, another career, transforming and impacting the lives of countless hundreds around the country.  She also became a professional coin collector, read virtually everything she could get her hands own, and was extremely conversant with alternative medicines.  Any ailment a family member had, or friends that complained of aches and pains, she could be counted on to forward them a variety of vitamins, minerals, and assorted health tonics, then follow up to see how they were doing.

 Services will be held on Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 12:00 p.m. at Stewart & Calhoun Funeral Home, 529 W. Thornton St., Akron, OH 44307. Pastor Chester Williams officiating Interment Elendale Cemetery.  Procession will form and condolences may be sent to 547 Montgomery St., Akron, OH 44305.