Joyce Strait

Joyce Strait (1926-2019)

Joyce Strait, whose sparkling life spanned ninety-two years, was born to Ase and Jessie (Young) Davis on July 21, 1926, in Mason City, Nebraska.
At the onset of the Great Depression, Joyce was still a toddler, a middle child between older brother Don and younger brother Paul, when her family relocated in a rickety Chevrolet to Hot Springs, South Dakota, gateway to the Black Hills. She remembered being poor in their early years there, but never hungry because her parents worked so tirelessly. Her father traded his labor to a farmer for dairy products and painted signs in exchange for housing supplies, her mom cultivated a huge garden and sewed her children's clothes from adult hand-me-downs.
Slowly but surely, her parents managed to accumulate some savings, enough to buy a plot of land and start building a house. The family lived in the basement the first couple of years until they could afford to finish it. Her father Ase, a born entrepreneur, sensed opportunity coming as the nation recovered from the Depression and traded their house for a grocery store. He built a thriving business by selling to the surrounding farms and nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Joyce fondly recalled that rural life – riding horses in beautiful landscapes and searching for arrowheads while on alert for rattlesnakes. She had many friends in school, got good grades, and participated in the marching band, orchestra, and choir, forming a lifelong appreciation for music.
However, this bucolic time would not last. When she was still in high school, her parents had a bitter divorce. Both brothers got tangled in problems of their own. Feeling alone, Joyce found an escape in a youthful romance with a young Texan named Billy Eugene Conn, who was a surveyor for an oil company. At age seventeen, she married him. His job put her on the back roads to some of the most desolate oil patches in America. Sometimes she had to stay behind, marooned with his parents because there was no family housing at the drilling sites. In 1945, she gave birth to Cynda, her first daughter, in Texon, Texas. The marriage was short lived.
At the invitation of her Grandmother Sue Davis, Joyce, then a divorced twenty year old, and daughter Cynda, moved to Colorado. She got a job in the bookkeeping department at Fitzsimmons Post Exchange and attended classes at a business college in off hours. Concerned that Joyce had no social life, her grandmother arranged a date. Her youngest son, Charlie, had a best friend she thought might provide nice companionship. When Charlie's friend arrived to pick her up, Joyce was enthralled – he was tall, had thick wavy hair, and very handsome in his pinstripe suit. His name was Maurice Strait, a WWII veteran who worked at a small, family owned lumber yard in Aurora.
Joyce vividly remembered their first date and picked out a special dress to catch his eye. A beautiful woman her entire life, Joyce always dressed with style from head to toe.

Her signature look was her flaming red hair (which she had styled each Saturday), perfect make-up, bright chic clothes, and heels (which became slightly shorter when she got older, but still heels).
During a year long courtship, they developed shared dreams for a strong family, a nice house, and the good things in life. Like her, Maurice had a hardscrabble youth marked by scarcity and long hours working in his family's fledgling lumber business. So in December, 1948, Joyce and Maurice wed. They drove away in a new Ford Convertible to honeymoon in the Florida Keys. Coming back, they stopped in New Orleans, where down on Bourbon Street Joyce got hooked on jazz, a music genre that would fill the Strait home for decades to come.
Joyce and Maurice, who was affectionately known to family and friends as Boze or Beazel, settled in a new house in Aurora. Joyce gave birth to son Mark in 1950 and second daughter Jan in 1954. The family enjoyed a classic 50's lifestyle – trips to amusement parks, Sunday evenings watching ""Maverick."" Beazel helped manage the fast-prospering lumber yard with his brothers Clint and Russ. Joyce would see to it her children got where they needed to be, driving around Aurora with all three kids in a two seat Ford Thunderbird convertible. That was her first ""hot"" car. More would follow, including an orange Corvette and a couple of red Mercedes.
Joyce enjoyed domestic life, but she had interests and ambitions beyond housework. She volunteered for several years at Children's Hospital as a “Pink Lady”. With her sparkling personality and business acumen, she later sold cosmetics, then moved on to do office work for many years for Dr. Paul Balstad, an ophthalmologist in Aurora. After her retirement from the office, she then drove for the Red Cross, transferring patients from their homes to their various medical appointments, through all kinds of situations and all kinds of weather.
She also discovered she had an artistic side. Over the years, she learned to paint, designed and sewed clothing for her kids and herself, and proved to be a talented interior decorator. In the Strait house, her artistic touches were everywhere. Whatever it was, whether a dress or picture frame, she had a knack for taking something plain and ordinary and turning it into something classy.
Joyce and Beazel also enjoyed a vibrant social life. Joyce had an effervescent, upbeat personality that engaged people. The Straits were some of the first members of the Valley Country Club, where they formed many friendships in the club and on the golf course. They could be found wagering on horses at the Centennial Race Track, in which some Straits invested, on singles and doubles bowling teams, and always at Denver Bronco home games, being faithful fans and season ticket holders from the very first game in 1960 to the present.
Joyce and Boze traveled widely. Sometimes it would be to see the big shows in Las Vegas, especially Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Or overseas, usually accompanied by Charlie. They toured Europe, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand and the Greek Isles. Charlie was attracted to exotic foreign women who would lead them on a tour beyond the usual tourist traps. They would always return with fun stories and happy memories.

More than anything else, Joyce deeply loved each of her children and grand children, and they all loved her back. All the family fondly recalls the special family celebrations she had for holidays like Christmas and Easter. As in any family, through the years there were ups and downs, events that were unexpected and painful. Mom/Gramie was always a safe harbor of stability, understanding, and encouragement. As daughter Jan remembered, ""She always handled things with grace. She just knew what to do.""
In 2010, Maurice passed away after several difficult years of declining health. Joyce was a loving caretaker throughout that time, but it took a mental and physical toll. Undaunted, she never let these intrude more than necessary in her life. During one long winter, she painted a fantastic mural of a street scene in Paris on the wall of a stairway leading down to the family room. Everyone marveled at her optimism and resilience.

She continued to live alone in their home for the remainder of her life. She did not wallow in self-pity, instead charged ahead with her life, organizing various projects inside and outside her home. After lots of searching for the right match, she acquired a puppy and named her Maybelline, who became her close and loving companion and encouraged her to keep moving. She also had lots of friends, other widows and people who helped her maintain her style and independence.
Above all, she cherished frequent visits from her family, which grew to include:

Cynda (Strait) Adamson, daughter
David Adamson, son-in-law
Isaac Adamson, grandson
Natalie Adamson, great granddaughter
Jasper Adamson, great grandson
Chelsea (Adamson) Prather, granddaughter
Toni Prather, great granddaughter
Sam Prather, great grandson
Mark Strait, son
Loie (Gillespie) Strait, daughter-in-law
Sarah (Strait) Johnson, granddaughter
Ivy Johnson, great granddaughter
Elizabeth (Strait) Phillips, granddaughter
Liam Phillips, great grandson
Jan (Strait) McCracken, daughter
Jim McCracken, son-in-law
Maya (Vaughn) Kiesnowski, granddaughter
Jacob Korbe, great grandson
Luke Korbe, great great grandson
Mariah Korbe, great granddaughter
Sebastian Ng, great great grandson
Amber Vaughn, granddaughter
Irie Lewis, great grandson
Rio Lewis, great granddaughter
Jesse Vaughn, grandson
Jenghis Vaughn, great grandson

In her later years, Joyce had few major regrets, but one minor one was that she wished she could have had more formal education, although she quipped that she had already earned a PhD in Life. She enthusiastically participated in The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Denver, studying everything from public policy to jazz and modern music. She had always valued learning, but the way her life unfolded made it difficult. Inspired from an OLLI writing class, she started writing journals, thoughts about her family and her life, and short pieces to share with friends and family to commemorate particular occasions. With the encouragement of her close circle of writing friends, she composed a fascinating memoir of her life, entitled ""and there are lemonade springs where the bluebird sings.""
In it, she wrote:
""I consider my life to be magical. Oh, yes, there have been Cinderella moments when I heard the clock strike midnight, when I revved to the dowdy servant, and when my spiffy sports car became a pumpkin.
These times were brief. Sad memories have blown away.
I feel that I am still surrounded by fairy dust…""

Joyce Strait sparkled. And that's how all who knew and loved her will remember her.

Funeral Service: April 30, 2019 1:00 pm

Horan & McConaty - SE Denver/Aurora
11150 E. Dartmouth Ave.
Aurora, CO 80014

Reception: April 30, 2019 2:00 pm

HeartLight
11150 E. Dartmouth Ave.
Aurora, CO 80014