Joyce M. Tager

Joyce Tager passed away in the early morning hours of August 30th at the age of 99. Born in 1926. Her mother Louise Loftus (nee Kaiser) originally from Chicago, married Harry Randall Loftus on the South Side of Chicago in 1912, the couple soon having two children, Jane Ayr (nee Loftus) and Charlie Loftus, before Joyce, the youngest of the family. Joyce moved around the country frequently as a young child due to her father’s job as an industrial engineer bringing the family to Chicago, El Segundo, California and finally to New Haven, CT where the family would settle and Joyce would spend the remainder of her childhood. After graduating from Hillhouse High School in New Haven in 1944, where she had been voted the wittiest girl in her graduating class, she entered the Yale University School of Art to study painting. The summer after her first year at Yale in 1945, she was inspired to travel to Provincetown with her freshman roommate, drawn by its reputation as an artist colony and found work for the summer as a server at the then Gray Inn, 386 Commercial Street, the current location of the Waterford Inn. She would return to Provincetown in subsequent years working a variety of summer jobs, including as clerk at the Provincetown Art Association Museum during the tenure of Director George Yater.

Joyce graduated from the Yale University School of Art in 1948 and after graduation worked as an art teacher at the Wheeler School in Providence, Rhode Island. While living in Providence she met her future husband, Bill Tager, then a student at Harvard University, after being set up on a blind date by a friend whom she had met in Provincetown the previous summer when both were servers at the Gray Inn. Bill and Joyce married in the Summer of 1951 at Saint Mary’s of the Harbor Church in Provincetown after Bill’s first year at Harvard Law School. Bill and Joyce would continue to return to Provincetown each Summer and in 1967 they purchased a home in the East End.

Her husband Bill graduated from Harvard Law School in 1953 and then enlisted in the Navy, where he worked in the JAG office at the Pentagon. While living in northern Virginia, Joyce taught primary school at a public school in Arlington, VA. Upon the completion of her husband’s navy service, the couple spent a year in Italy and then settled in New York City, where they would live until 1965. Her daughter Catherine was born in 1961, followed by son Samuel in 1963. The Tager family would move back to the Boston area in 1965, purchasing a home in Brookline where they would live until 2017.

Throughout her life, Joyce maintained a strong interest and extensive knowledge of arts and culture, frequenting museums, galleries, theatres, jazz concerts and numerous other significant cultural institutions in both New York, Boston as well as Provincetown.

In 1977 when her two children were high school age, Joyce returned to higher education at the University of Massachusetts-Boston School of Management, graduating in 1979 with Bachelor’s of Business Administration. She would then put her lifelong interest in the arts into practice managing a succession of Boston area cultural institutions, beginning as a volunteer at the New Wrinkle Theatre before being hired as the business manager at the USS Constitution Museum. Joyce would work at the Constitution Museum until 1986 before moving on to a management role at the Art Institute of Boston. Joyce retired in 1991.

After retirement, Joyce travelled extensively throughout the 1990s, primarily with the Provincetown Arts Association who at that time frequently sponsored group travel intended to experience the arts. Joyce’s travel included trips to several recently opened former Eastern Bloc countries, notably Hungary and the Czech Republic, as well as China and South Africa. She and her husband Bill also returned to Italy for the first time since their year abroad in the early 50s after Bill’s retirement in 1993. Joyce was remembered fondly by her PAAM travel companions for her quick wit, curiosity, and extensive knowledge of art history.

Joyce was known as a particularly gracious host throughout her life, regularly opening both her home in Brookline and in Provincetown to friends and relatives for extended stays or lively dinner parties. In 2017, the couple sold their home in Brookline and relocated full time to Seashore Pointe in Provincetown, spending their final years together in the town for which they shared a mutual affection for more than seven decades.

She was predeceased by her husband Bill of Provincetown, her sister Jane (Loftus) Ayr of Branford, CT, her brother Charlie Loftus of New Haven, CT. She is survived by her daughter Catherine Tager and her husband Scott Bratton, of Carlisle, Mass, her son, Samuel Tager and his wife Jenny, of Provincetown, Mass, as well as by four grandchildren, Antonia Tager of Provincetown, Henry Tager of Amherst, Mass, Rachel Bratton, of Gainesville, FL and Colin Bratton of Brattleboro, VT. Additionally Joyce is survived by her niece and nephew and their spouse, the son and daughter of her sister Jane with whom she maintained close ties as well as several grand nieces and nephews.