Joy Peterson

Joy Peterson would tell you she had more fun than most people in this life. She’d probably back up that statement with her distinctive laugh and follow it with a well-timed joke, daring you not to chuckle with her.

Growing up, her four children could get out of hot water just by making her giggle. And during sleepovers, their friends might mimic Joy’s gleeful outbursts. This embarrassed them as kids. But as adults they saw it as a compliment: They had a mother known for delighting in the moment.

She also adored Christmas, festooning the house with holiday knickknacks too numerous to count. In recent years, every day was Christmas at the Bonita, California, home she had lived in since 1977. Worried about whether she would be around for another yuletide season, she began leaving her tree up year-round, complete with lights and ornaments.

More than a few of them spelled out “Joy.”

The second of four children, Joy Best was born July 17, 1935, in Great Falls, Montana, to Stanley, a rancher, and Marguerite, a special-education teacher.

Joy always said she was sent off to kindergarten at age 4 because her mother considered her “a handful.” This led Joy to begin lying about her age when she was 5 years old. She wanted to be 6 like the other kids.

As a girl, she lived on a farm in Buckley, Washington, and moved with her family to a ranch outside of Kalispell, Montana, when she was 9. After a year of country schooling, the Best children went to school in Kalispell, living in a house their Scottish-immigrant grandmother had purchased.

Joy was only 12 when she started working summers on nearby ranches, helping to prepare meals for the haying crews. Paid a dollar a day, she used every cent to buy new school clothes.

By 13, she had a job in a bowling alley, setting up pins by hand. Joy would bowl in leagues for decades and treasured her “200 club” lapel pins. In the 1980s, she called a daughter, sobbing, because the bowling ball she had used since the 1960s had been stolen. Her game never quite recovered.

As a teenager, she paid to install the first telephone in the Kalispell house and covered the monthly phone bill. For those who knew Joy, this makes perfect sense. She could talk like there was no tomorrow.

In high school, she began working at the Kalispell Mercantile, learning the printing trade in the advertising department and setting up displays throughout the store.

At 17, Joy walked down the aisle for the first time. When her father asked her if she was sure she wanted to do this, she said, “No, but I’m going to anyway.” She saw it as a way to escape ranch life, and it took her to Missoula and Great Falls, Montana; Florida; Seattle; and, finally, San Diego. The marriage lasted 17 years and gave her three children.

Wherever she went, she made good friends, played a mean game of Scrabble, devoured biographies and was invariably the life of the party. Since 1969 she had been a subscriber and devoted reader of what is now the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Soon after moving to Chula Vista, she went on a first date with her future husband, Ken Peterson, and once again felt compelled to lie about her age. A guilt-ridden Joy shortly confessed, “I’m 34, not 32.” A laughing Ken replied, “That’s OK. I’m 25, not 27.” And just like that, their age gap went from five to nine years. She loved to tell that story.

They were people persons. Wherever they went, raucous laughter followed. In the 1970s they bought a second home at the Colorado River, where they spent many weekends over the next 40 years boating and waterskiing – and forging strong friendships.

Joy and Ken had been together for nearly 53 years when he died suddenly at 77 in May 2022. After his death, Joy would unfailingly refer to him as “the love of my life.”

When she had her fourth child, in 1971, Joy decided to fib once more. At 36 she was “awfully old to be having a baby,” she said at the time. So on her youngest daughter’s birth certificate, Joy shaved a year off her age.

She was proud that all four of her children had college degrees, most of them more than one. She raised two teachers, a journalist and a nurse. Joy had an associate’s degree in child development, earned from Southwestern College while she raised her family.

For many years, she worked as a teacher’s aide in the Chula Vista Elementary School District. When she wrapped up her career in 2000, she was a librarian at Allen Elementary School in Bonita.

Joy died at home on November 25 of congestive heart failure and other complications of old age. She was 88.

The name “Joy” suited her, except her given name was actually Marguerite, in honor of her mother. Her family never used it — and woe to anyone who did. She’d lecture about how a lifetime of confusion could be avoided if parents treated first names as first names.

No services will be held.

Wherever you are, please raise a glass on Joy’s behalf. As she would surely say — it’s wine o’clock somewhere.

Joy is survived by her four children, Eric Nelson, Valerie Nelson, Vicki St. John and Cheri Peterson; her three siblings, Carolyn Wilson, Ruth Hamilton and Robert Best; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.