Joyce B. Schmitt

The gift that was Joyce Schmitt was born the day after Christmas, 1925, in Boone, Iowa, the third of four daughters of Robert and Marian (Barger) Bennett. Raised on a farm, and living her formative years during the Great Depression, Joyce was instilled with resourcefulness and grit. As a young woman, she became an expert seamstress, an accomplished pianist, and a high-scoring small forward on her high school basketball team. Joyce earned a B.S. in home economics education from Iowa State College where she met her future husband, Richard G. “Dick” Schmitt, Jr., of Columbus, OH. The story goes: on a spring night in 1946 Joyce was leaving the campus library with a friend and held the door for the recent Army vet who was back in school studying for a master’s degree in agricultural economics. The fateful gesture led to a Coke date and 55 years of marriage. They moved to Washington where Dick had a government job waiting, stopping in each state along the way for a celebratory ice cream cone. Joyce successfully wore many hats: she taught middle-school home economics, at Kensington and Nicholas Orem junior high schools, and cooking classes at the YWCA in Washington. (She was featured in an article in the Washington Post in 1965 when a married man joined the usual group of “bachelor girls” taking her course. The Post headline: “He Can Now Engineer a Souffle.”) Joyce was active in church and community groups, serving on the music committee and playing the piano for the junior choir at the University United Methodist Church in College Park. She was a tirelessly devoted mother of three sons, ensuring that each took instrumental music lessons and more than once pinch-hitting on their early morning newspaper route. After raising her boys, Joyce, reflecting her life-long love of sewing, opened her own fabric shop. “Fabric Corner” - in the Parole Plaza Shopping Center in Annapolis -- flourished for two decades; a second store was added in Glen Burnie. Dick retired from government service to work for his “Joy.” In 1993, they moved to Asbury Methodist Village in Gaithersburg, where Joyce applied her retail skills to the campus “Bargain Mart” that sold donated household items for charity. After 9-11, she gave away scores of patriotic lapel badges she made out of red-white-and-blue ribbon left over from her old store. A rural development specialist with the U.S. Agriculture and Commerce departments, Dick died in 2003. Joyce now rests with him in heavenly peace.

Joyce is survived by sons Thomas Schmitt (Karen) of Concord, NC, and Richard Schmitt (Shirley) of Derwood; daughter-in-law Lynn Schmitt and Doug Taylor of Germantown; grand-daughters Hana Graham (Luke) of Belfast, Northern Ireland, Rebecca Loewenhagen (Peter) of Washington, Laura Forinash (David) of Torrance, CA, and Emily Sachs (Aaron) of York, PA; grandsons Stephen Schmitt (McKenzie) of Charlotte, NC, and Matthew Schmitt of Columbia; five great-grandchildren, and a sister, Carol Volker, of Ames, IA. Joyce’s son Michael preceded her in death.

Contributions in Joyce’s memory may be made to the Michael B. Schmitt Endowment for the Center for Political Participation at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA.

Services were private.