Joyce Ann Pittman Taylor

When asked as a little girl, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” young Joyce Ann Pittman always replied, “A sweet old lady.” 

She achieved that wish, passing on December 9, 2021, just eight days short of her 84th birthday, remaining sweet and kind to every person she met. 

Born December 17, 1937, as the fifth of 10 children of Noble and Julia Pittman, she grew up in a crowded brick farmhouse atop a hill in Southern Illinois, surrounded by her siblings and parents, her maternal and paternal grandmothers, and an aunt and uncle who lived with the family. 

Many more aunts, uncles, and cousins would visit on a regular basis, making the house a lively center of conversation and activity.

For about three years Joyce walked a mile each way to attend Pleasant Grove School, a one-room country school in the unincorporated village of Levings. 

Like many of the Pittman children, Joyce Ann, as they called her, was noted for intelligence and wit, often acting as a teacher for younger students in and out of her family. 

Her mother suffered from chronic asthma, so as older sisters left home, Joyce became something of a “second mother,” not only to her youngest siblings, but also to a growing population of nieces and nephews. 

At 14, a bout of Bell’s palsy slightly paralyzed some of her facial muscles, such that for the rest of her life people often thought she was smiling wryly at something. This was convenient, because she often was.

Joyce attended high school in Grand Chain. She and another student agreed to read every book in the school library. They did. 

She excelled not only in academics but in sports: The coach of the small basketball team sincerely asked her to join, but the principal decided that Illinois was not ready for a girl on a boys’ team. 

After high school she attended Southern Illinois University on scholarship before transferring to Southeast Missouri State University, where she joined a university flying club and met a tall, handsome naval veteran named Dan Taylor. 

The two were married in 1959 and lived briefly in Kansas City, Missouri, before moving to Ormond Beach, Florida. 

There they had three children: Michael Ray Taylor, Jeanne Marie Taylor Christensen and James Robert Taylor. 

While pregnant with Michael, she worked as a secretary in the Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach, where she would often assist visiting performers like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and B.B. King. 

In the early 1960s, she worked for a state vocational program, teaching business skills to underprivileged minorities; many of her students went on to successful careers and wrote to her for years after the school was closed. 

She became a legal secretary and then a certified paralegal, working for large Daytona Beach law firms until the early 2000s. 

The Taylor home on the Halifax River became a popular vacation spot for both sides of their extended families. 

After Dan’s passing in 2007, she wrote poetry and traveled widely, while continuing to host many visitors at her home. 

She met another poet named Phillip Abbot in an online poets’ group, and he soon became an important part of her life and an enduring telephone companion to the very end. 

In 2016, she moved from Florida to live with Mike and Kathy Taylor in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. 

After a fall and surgery in October 2021, she was undergoing physical therapy in Arkadelphia until she was hospitalized with kidney failure on December 7.

She is survived by her three children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, as well as five of her siblings and many nieces, nephews, cousins and countless others who knew her as teacher, friend or trusted advisor. 

In college, she once called out a sociology professor who disparaged a “yard full of wild, half-naked farm children” he had noticed while hunting in Southern Illinois. 

She told him those could have been her brothers and sisters, a group whose number would one day include a college professor, a lawyer, a decorated military pilot, an Army colonel, and many more success stories. Not to mention the doctors, writers, farmers, and entrepreneurs among their children and grandchildren. 

Joyce Ann remained fiercely proud of her family and farm upbringing throughout her life. 

Even as the slow onslaught of Alzheimer’s gradually robbed more recent memories, she could always recall and delight in telling stories of the Pittman household. 

As her health declined, she spent more time in doctor’s offices and hospitals, but nurses, doctors, and other patients were continually delighted by the funny country stories that the sweet old lady would tell.

A memorial service for Joyce Ann Pittman Taylor is scheduled for 11 a.m. on January 15, 2022, at Cache Chapel Church in Ullin, Illinois. 

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Joyce’s memory to the theatre program at Henderson State University (hsutheatre.com), which provided much entertainment in her later years, or to your local Humane Society. 

For those unable to travel, the memorial service will be streamed publicly on the Cache Chapel Facebook site. 

The family requests that those attending in person be fully vaccinated and, if possible, take a Covid-19 test prior to the service.