Memories of Joyce Berger

I am sad to announce the death of our dear sister Joyce Berger, age 97 years and 51 weeks. 

EARLY YEARS

She was the youngest of three daughters born to William & Mabel (Wyatt) Ingram. She grew up in Wellsville, Missouri, where her father was a postal clerk and her mother ran the household. The family moved to the near north side of St. Louis in the late 1930s, where Joyce’s father became a letter carrier and she attended Soldan High School. She married Soldan classmate Robert P. Ferguson, Jr., in 1945. He was a pilot in the Air Corps and Air Force, flying missions in the Pacific theater in WWII and in Korea. During this time, she and their two children – Robert III and Lucia – lived in Michigan, Arizona, and Florida, before Joyce returned permanently to St. Louis with the children.

LIFE IN WEBSTER GROVES

Joyce joined First Church with her second husband Allen on December 11, 1960. The newsletter then, The Word, records the two of them and their son Bob becoming members – Allen and Joyce by letter of transfer from Presbyterian churches nearby.

When she and Allen married, his parents lived in a large house on Mason Avenue in Webster Groves, not far from First Congregational, and the newlyweds were looking for “a neutral church” to be a part of. They had each been attending other churches in Webster, and the great stone church at the top of the hill from his parents’ house intrigued them. Once they were introduced to Dr. Inglis and First Webster, she liked to say, it was an immediate match.

They had met through mutual friends. Allen was a widower with a daughter Judy who was 5 and twins David and Kathy who were 2 (The children’s mother Helen tragically had died while birthing the twins.). Joyce’s son Bob was 13 by this time, and her daughter Lucia was 12. In setting up their new home, the two parents would adopt each other’s children. 

Allen was a salesman who traveled a lot. Joyce made a career locally with the Republican party. In 1972, she ran the St. Louis County campaign of gubernatorial candidate Christopher “Kit” Bond whose emphasis on government reform was the great attractor for her. When Mr. Bond was unable to attend local campaign events, Joyce went in his place. This, she said, was her favorite job. Her least favorite had been working with the County Election Board, which she said was filled with people who were, in her opinion, “unqualified political appointees.”

Joyce spoke very fondly of the days when Allen taught the 5th and 6th grade boys Sunday School class and she the girls. After a few years, she opted for the 2nd and 3rd graders, and enjoyed that assignment even more.

She was an adult chaperone for the 1968 youth mission trip to Rough Rock, Arizona. She told me that she didn’t particularly like being stationed on the floor in a sleeping bag in front of the exterior door of the girls’ quarters, but Joyce was the preventer of liaisons and other mischief! The work of assisting others and guiding youth in how to do so was very gratifying and made the overnight conditions somewhat excusable. Joyce would quote another parent on one of these excursions who complained that “If I never hear another Beatles song, it will be too soon.” Joyce would laugh at this and said that the other parent was too rough on the Beatles.

She and Allen were fixtures at First Church for as long as they lived. Allen died in 2004 with an untreatable cancer. They were married for almost 44 years.

AT THE ALGONQUIN

Joyce moved from their home on Wilshire Terrace, to The Algonquin apartments across Gore Avenue from the church, in 2013. Not long afterward, she got a new next door neighbor, Jean Tarkington. Jean’s mother, Della Bobbitt, had worked as one of First Church’s cooks in 1950s and 60s, in the days before potluck luncheons and dinners were served here. Jean had fond memories of the church, from helping out her mother as a kitchen assistant. Joyce was fascinated by Jean, who is almost six feet tall with a broad smile and a quiet demeanor. They loved that they had the church in common, even if neither of them had known the other from before.

During their years as neighbors, Jean and Joyce became quite close. In August of 2014, Jean appeared in tears at Joyce’s door. “What’s wrong?” Joyce asked her. “They’re killing our babies!” Jean cried, and Joyce brought her sobbing friend inside and sat her down. She made them some tea, and spent the afternoon listening and finding her heart opening up to concerns she had never even considered. Jean was reacting to the killing of Michael Brown, Jr., and the desecration of his body which lay in the open for four hours in the heat of that summer Saturday in Ferguson. Hostile reaction arose among African Americans and allies across the region; Jean’s response was despair.

“What could I do?” Joyce asked me, when we visited a few days later. “What can I do?” Joyce realized, that day and for the rest of her relationship with Jean, how powerless anyone can feel who has come to recognize that the world’s people cannot afford the distances we’ve poised between ourselves.

One Sunday in late 2017, not long after the announcement of the engagement of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle, Joyce appeared at my office door with a thin package which she said she thought my daughter Gwen ought to have. It wasn’t a Christmas present, she said, but something Joyce had found when out shopping, and the inspiration hit her. Inside, Gwen found a book of paper doll cutouts of the couple which she absolutely cherished. Gwen was 11 at the time, and Mrs. Berger thereafter was one of her favorite adults at church.

It was around this time that Joyce’s attendance began to flag. “It’s hard to get moving in the morning,” she confessed to me. Thus I would come to visit her more often than she would get to worship. 

CAPE ALBEON

Joyce was my first in-person visit since the COVID pandemic began. She moved from The Algonquin to an assisted living setting at Cape Albeon Senior Living, in the spring of 2020. Her friend Jean moved out of The Algonquin at about the same time, to be closer to her daughter in Springfield, Missouri. 

The move came after the pandemic forced lockdowns, but Joyce, as a newcomer, still had to be isolated in her room for two weeks before she could circulate among other residents. Her room was just a few doors down from the residence of church members Carol and Bob McCoy, and Joyce had decided that Cape Albeon would be a good setting for here because Bob and Carol would be living there, too. Carol died in December 2020, however, and Bob moved back to independent living. Prior to his death seven months after Carol’s, Bob would sometimes pop over for a visit, but afterward she was left without any close friends nearby. 

For this reason, she was thankful for other church friends. There had been a time when she played bridge weekly with Janet Fales and Elaine Coe (and another friend she said I wouldn't know), and those friends would still stop over, though minus the bridge. Kay Roush and Marilyn Claggett were dear Friend-to-Friend visitors. Tracey Harris looked her up while doing her Clinical Pastoral Education course at Cape Albeon. Her son David came by about daily; Lucia brought her home for suppers weekly, and the other children were similarly attentive. She always fantasized with David about attending worship, some Sunday, and I would occasionally get voicemail messages from him reporting upcoming weekends when they thought they would try.

Joyce was satisfied with her living situation – “great staff,” she said, “good food, and everything on one level.” She kept bird feeders outside her patio door to watch nature’s activity. “I have it pretty good,” she reflected often.

David called me in February of this year, and reported that his mother wished I would stop by to talk about matters regarding death. It wasn’t the first time I’d visited for this reason. Joyce had asked me over, a couple of times when she was at The Algonquin, with similar requests. “I just need to talk this out,” she would say.

In February, she ventured to say that she was confused about what happens when we die. She said, she thought she agreed with one friend “that heaven isn’t a bunch of little people dancing around on clouds,” as she put it, “but I don’t know what it is.” I stated my opinion to her that anybody who says that they do know what death is, is lying to you. We talked for a little while about God as a great mystery. The theologian Paul Tillich said that God is the Ground of all being, not being itself, not A being, but that Source from which all existence springs. We both said that we felt satisfied by this way of thinking, even if it didn’t concretely answer her questions about death.

“I’ve had a good life,” she would say. There was a way that she inflected this statement that would cause me to think that she maybe was saying she didn’t deserve life to have been as good as it has been. She was troubled by ways in which she felt that she’d failed as a daughter or as a mother, maybe even as a friend. 

When I prayed with her at the end February’s visit, I found myself expressing to God the profound mystery that we experience about the Divine and what the future holds in store, even beyond this life. As I spoke the “Amen,” with tears in her eyes she said, “Thank you. That hit the spot.”

My final visit with Joyce was a couple of weeks ago. I had just presided another church member’s memorial service, and Pastoral Assistant Halley Kim appeared at my door with a note. Joyce’s son Bob had called to inform me that the family was transitioning Joyce to hospice care. I rang him back, and we both shed tears, aware that she was about to know what she had previously only pondered about death and afterlife. He and I were alternately sad for ourselves and joyous for her. I told Bob that I would go to see her, and I did just a few moments later. 

In that call with him, I heard him reflecting the way his mother would, about life and love. Days later I spoke with Lucia and thought I heard Joyce’s voice – the same inflection and cadence. And David and I texted back and forth about those Sunday visits that never quite were able to happen.

Joyce was weak when I got to her room on January 3. She was reclining on the couch, asleep, so I roused her. Her eyes fluttered open, and she smiled to see me. I stayed only about five minutes, until she told me she was ready to take another nap. As I prepared to go, her demeanor suddenly brightened. “Have a great time!” she exclaimed. “Thank you,” I said, “and a happy new year to you.” She replied, “Much love!” and waved ever so slightly. “Love to you too,” I answered and left her to her nap.

There won’t be a memorial service for Joyce, nor a burial. Like Allen, she donated her body to science, and those who benefit academically from her contribution will see that she is honored properly. In the springtime a stonecutter will come and etch her name just below Allen’s on a stone in the churchyard, and her family will gather to make a dedication of that token to her memory. All of us who knew her will carry forward the love and joy, caring and concern, and maybe just a hint of doubt and guilt, to keep us humble as she was.

Peace.

< Link to Joyce's newspaper obituary >