Joyce Allayne Callaway-Schwartz

She passed away peacefully on March 11 at her home in Chula Vista surrounded by family. She was 95 years old.

Life for Joyce began with odds stacked against her when she was born at just 8 months and weighing 2.5 pounds. But she was kept alive through the delicate feedings of an eyedropper by her grandmother Mary Elizabeth Moss Callaway and a homemade incubator made from a man’s boot box.

Her vigor would be proved throughout her young childhood and mid-teens when she was put to work in the fields by her sharecropper father picking cotton and corn at just 6 years old.

Born during the Great Depression, her family had little money and all children were expected to pull their weight. She set out to show a great example for her four younger brothers Joe Glen, Willie “Bill” Allen, Ralph Dwain aka “Shortie,” and Jerry Frank.

At the age of 8 Joyce could pick and plant cotton, bail hay, milk cows and cut cord wood. By 12 years old she was picking 200 pounds of cotton a day.

It was 1942 when Joyce moved to California with her family, a change that was prompted by flooding from storms ruining her father’s crops several years in a row.

She attended Kelsey Jennings Business School in San Diego and later worked as a secretary to the Director of Material in Chula Vista at what was then Rohr Industries for 22 years before retiring.

It was there she met her first husband, Joseph Alphonse Sampité, a sailor from Cloutierville, Louisiana. They had two sons together.

They divorced and she remarried Robert “Bob” Paul Schwartz in June 1977. Bob died on April 28, 2002. Joe’s death followed on June 19, 2013.

Joyce found a passion in philanthropic work, including raising money to purchase prostheses for crippled children. She also enjoyed theater, dancing, golf and bowling.

A celebration of life will be held in the Little Chapel of the Roses at Glen Abbey in Bonita on April 6 at 10 a.m. In lieu of flowers please send donations to the Shriner’s Children Hospital, a charity that Joyce and her late husband Bob supported.

Joyce is survived by her sons Terry Joseph Sampité, Dennis Cleveland Sampité and Bob Paul Schwartz Jr.; brother Jerry Frank Callaway; granddaughters Veronica and Allison Sampité and two great grandchildren.