Joyce June Harvey Gruntman

She was born Joyce June Harvey on September 17, 1936 to Glenn Price Harvey and Helen Elizabeth Little. She was the eldest of three daughters. She lived many places in her lifetime but most of her childhood years were spent at the family farm in Louisville, Missouri. She had two younger sisters, Jimee, Mrs. James R. Peasel, who preceded her in death, and Janice, Mrs. Mark Wunderlich who survives. As a child she spent most of her time playing with her sister Jimee on the family farm in Louisville. A baby sister, Janice, joined the family when she was a teenager, and she spent many hours playing with, spoiling and helping their mother to raise her after her father’s death in 1963. Jimee, being only a few years younger, was one of her closest friends throughout her entire life.

She graduated from Bowling Green high School in 1954 and then took up a position at Southwestern Bell as a telephone operator. While employed there she met Ray Gruntman. Ray was a young gentleman from Centerville, South Dakota, and was working construction in the area. The two were married at Fort Hood, Texas, where Ray was stationed in the U.S. Army. The two were married 53 years. When Ray was discharged from service the two lived in Bowling Green, Missouri, with their first born, a daughter, Joni Kay. In 1963 the family that now included a son, Jeffrey Ray, moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where they lived until their retirement. Two years later they welcomed the final addition to their family, Jerry Glenn, in 1965.

After the family moved to St. Louis she babysat for neighborhood children for a time and later was employed with Medicare Pharmacy and Willowbrook Pharmacy as a pharmacy tech. But the most important ‘job’ she held was that of being a homemaker, wife and mother. She was very involved in all her children’s lives and was active in the PTA at DeHart School, where her children went to elementary school. All her children were involved in sports, and their home, yard and family van were always full of their children and many others throughout their childhood. She loved them all and felt like she helped to raise them with her own.

She enjoyed gardening and canning vegetables, something she learned from her mother and grandmothers when she was younger. She loved flowers and plants and her home and yard were full of them every spring and summer. She had 10 grandchildren and six nieces and nephews that she spent many hours babysitting for. Throughout her married life she and Ray were well known for their holiday decorations. Christmas was her favorite and their yard and house, indoors and out, was always decorated to the hilt. After her and Ray’s retirements, she enjoyed traveling with him and sometimes her children and grandchildren on vacations and just spending time with her close friends and family. She always had a positive outlook on life and a smile on her face.

Joyce was also famous for her scrap booking (before it was a popular pastime). She has many scrapbooks beginning with her own childhood through her entire life. She has made individual scrap books for her children and grandchildren as well. Her close friends and family have spent many enjoyable hours looking over her family’s lives in these precious books. She has saved and included such details as birthday cards and letters from loved ones (from her parents to her children) and cards from when she or any of her family was ill or hospitalized. She has newspaper clippings of births, marriages and Santa letters. She has report cards, napkins from memorable meals at restaurants and receipts from hotels on vacations. And last but not least, literally thousands of pictures, along with personal notations of who, when and where!

We are so thankful for her organizational skills because she has taught us and will continue to teach us through all her creative memory books how important that family is.

Arrangements under the direction of Alexander-White-Mullen Funeral Home, Saint Ann, MO.