Joyce Ann (Howe) Williamson

Joyce Ann (Howe) Williamson went to be with the Lord on Monday, October 12, 2026. She was born in Champaign, Illinois, on July 3, 1956. As the oldest grandchild on both sides of her family, she was dearly loved by her paternal grandparents, Marshall and Atha Howe; her maternal grandparents, Wilbur and Dorthy James; and her great-grandparents, Laura Meredith and Ross and Pearl Schwartz, as well as by many aunts and uncles.

Joyce lived in downstate Illinois until her family moved to Houston in 1971. At age ten, she received Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. In 1974, she graduated from Westbury High School in Houston, Texas, and then worked for a Houston orthodontist and later for NFIB.

On October 22, 1977, she met Bob Williamson, who was then an infantry lieutenant stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia. He proposed to her on January 29, 1978, and they married on April 1, 1978, in Houston, Texas. (They may have married in haste, but there was never any repentance.) As newlyweds, Bob and Joyce lived in Savannah, Georgia. After Bob’s discharge from the Army in January 1979, they moved to Bob’s hometown of El Paso, Texas, where Bob attended UTEP and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering. From El Paso, they moved to the Dallas–Fort Worth area in December 1980, where Bob worked for Texas Power and Light Company in downtown Dallas.

After moving seven times during the first four years of their marriage, Bob and Joyce settled in Arlington, Texas, where they raised their three sons in the same home where Joyce took her last breath. She was a true “Proverbs 31” woman who was jokingly, but admittedly, married to a “Proverbs 30:2” man. She was always devoted to the Lord’s work and actively involved in the education and nurturing of her sons. Throughout the boys’ school years, she joined other mothers in praying for their sons through “Moms in Touch.”

Her letter-writing skills, which had won the heart of that Army lieutenant, also endeared her to many friends with whom she stayed in touch—particularly her Aunt Susan and her dearest friends, Mary, Suzanne, Nancy, and Melanie (yes, the same Melanie with whom Joyce shares three grandchildren). Joyce was dearly loved by her husband, her sons, and so many others.

The day before Joyce died, she spoke her last complete, coherent sentence: “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior”—the same confession she had made sixty years earlier as a ten-year-old girl. We now grieve Joyce’s departure, but we do so with the joy of knowing that she has passed from our embrace into the arms of her Lord and Savior.

Joyce was preceded in death by her father, Max Marshall Howe; her brother, Jay Marshall Howe; her son, Benjamin Roy Williamson; and her grandson, Luke Simeon Williamson.

She is survived by her husband, Robert Bruce Williamson; her mother, Diane James Howe; her sister, Tina Howe McDonald; her brother, William James Howe; her sons, Andrew Walter Williamson (and his wife, Lauren Elizabeth [Chrismer] Williamson) and James Martin Williamson (and his wife, Amber Jade [Cano] Williamson); her daughter-in-law, Tiffany Williamson; and her grandchildren, Abigail Ruth Williamson, David Mace Williamson, James Martin Williamson, Jr., Matthew Rudy Williamson, Lillian Elise Williamson, Calvin Scott Williamson, and Titus Robert Williamson. She is also survived by numerous nieces and nephews.