Joyce Gailey Dooley

Mom’s Eulogy

Eulogy for Joyce Gailey Dooley

My Mom, Joyce, was born on September 20th, 1940.
When Grandma went into labor, they left Neola in the Uintah Basin and headed for Salt Lake City. Although it was snowing, Bruce and Vi figured they had enough time to make it to Salt Lake, but as they were nearing Parley’s summit, they realized that the baby was coming, and it was coming in the car if they didn’t stop somewhere quick! They, took the Park City exit, and that’s where grandma gave birth. In a small house near the top of Main street.
Mom’s Birth Certificate reads, “Resident of Park City for one hour”, because once the baby was cleaned up and swaddled, they continued on through the blizzard to St. Marks Hospital in Salt Lake City.

Mom lived with her parents, in the small town of Neola in a tiny log cabin, it was sort of part ranch and part farm, in the middle of nowhere. She told me once about how small the house was and that her Dad decided to build on a room. While the new room was under constrution, they had to move the sofa out into the yard under a tree.
“It took my Dad all summer to build that room ” Mom said, “the whole time, the tree dropped these small red seeds on the couch. By the time the room was finished, we had a polka dotted sofa.”

Mom had to walk quite a ways to the bus stop to catch the school bus every day, she remembered her coat being too thin in the frigid winters, so that she was always cold. She said that’s why she had an obsession with coats and jackets for the rest of her life.

It doesn’t, however, explain her obsession with purses.

Mom was born with one blue eye and the other green. When she was 12 years old, Mom followed grandpa one day when he went to chop wood. As her Dad swung the axe, a chip of wood flew through the air, hitting her in the eye. There was nothing Doctors could do back then so the injury resulted in Mom losing her right eye.

From that time on, both of Mom’s eyes were blue.

In 1953, when Mom was 13, the family packed up and moved to the Salt Lake valley.
Because Grandma had to work, Mom spent much of her time after school taking care of her little sister RaNae, who was just 6 years old when they moved.

I asked RaNae about her memories of this time, this is what she told me…

” When we went through traumatic experiences in our lives, she was there by my side. She helped me work through painful childhood memories and was a source of strength and resilience. ”
“In our upstairs bedrooms we sang duets together, read teen magazines, listened to music together, laughed together and cried together. She raised me until I was basically in middle school because our mom was working. I Don’t know how many days we had mayonnaise sandwiches and chocolate pudding for lunch!”

Mom attended High School at Jordan High, where she graduated with a Scholarship in art and Photography In 1959.
Even with a scholarship, college is expensive and her parents didn’t see the need for a woman to attend College, so she gave up her scholarship to the next person in line and got a job at Arbacks department store.

Joyce met her future husband David on a blind date.
They went to a movie at the Redwood Drive in. Dad doesn’t remember what the movie was, he just remembers that she was beautiful.
During the movie, Dad got some food from the snack bar, probably burgers and fries because Mom accidentally squirted catsup on Dad’s one of a kind, designer shirt.

Not the most ideal first date, so Dad decided to try again.

A friend of Dad’s got tickets to a ‘Dinner and Dance’ at a fancy hotel uptown.
It wasn’t until they were on their way to the double date that his friend admitted that he didn’t actually have tickets to the “Reservation Only” event. To Dads immense irritation,
they ended up walking through the grounds of the Salt Lake Temple instead.

Dad felt really bad about their dating record so far, so he went to a department store and bought Mom a nice blouse as a gift.
Unfortunately, the blouse was several sizes too big. Dad didn’t find out until years later that Mom and Grandma had picked out all of the stitches and re-sewn the blouse in the right size so that Mom could wear it.

Dad moved to Montana to work, but he couldn’t get Mom out of his head.
He sent her a package timed to arrive on Valentines day.
Dad proposed to Mom over the phone, sending her a box of outmeal with an engagement ring inside because he “couldn’t think of anything mushy to say”

Mom and Dad were married the morning of April 1st, 1960 at the Salt Lake Temple and Joyce Gailey became Joyce Dooley.

They lived in a few small places in the early years of their marriage. Among them was a 28′ X 8′ trailor that they were forced to live in for about 4 years. Dad has… not so fond memories of that cramped green trailor.

In 1961, Mom and her new baby, Evona were riding down Parleys Summit with her Dad in his brand new Chevy Chevelle, when the sun got in his eyes and they were in a terrible accident.
Grandpa and the baby were Ok but Mom was badly injured, she was in the intensive care unit for 28 days.

When she was released from the hospital, she couldn’t walk for a long time, so Evona had to live with her Grandma and Grandpa Dooley for awhile, it was one of the hardest winters of Mom’s life, she was pregnant with her second child, Ronda at during that time.

Mom recovered from the accident over the next several months, and focussed on being a wife and mother.

Over these first years of her marriage, she became very close to her Mother in-law, Dora, they spent a lot of time together and became good friends, Mom expressed to Dad that she loved his mother very much.

Mom also continued to spend time with her little sister RaNae, who has fond memories of her time with her big sister.

Of this time and subsequent years, Aunt RaNae said the following…

“As I grew older, Joyce continued to teach me about various aspects of life — how to form friendships, how to tell if I was in love, and how to have a tooth filled without anesthesia. She and your dad were my oasis before I got married.”
“For several years we went to Woodland and harvested choke cherries in August and made syrup and jam the way our mother and grandmother had.”

Mom gave birth to 3 daughters,
each two years apart. Evona, Ronda and Tonya.
Four years later, just as they were considering adopting a child, they got a surprise, Mom was pregnant. I was born in February of 1970.

They bought their home where they would spend the rest of their lives around that time.

Mom went to work at Deseret Pharmaceutical in 1975 when I started kindergarten.

My earliest memories of Mom, were singing with her in the car, counting with her as she curled my hair, going to visit Grandma Gailey and helping mom do canning in the kitchen.
I loved her completely and went with her everywhere when I was small. I remember going clothes shopping with her for what seemed like hours and hiding inside the clothing racks.

We went to the cabin in Woodland every weekend, collecting leaves and picking Choke Cherries for syrup in the fall, sledding and snowmobiling in the winter when the snow was so deep it was over my head. I loved riding behind Dad on the snowmobile high up into the mountains where there was untouched snow as far as the eye could see and sipping Mom’s hot buttered rum as she pointed out the mountain tops of Timpanogis in the distance.

Mom and Dad took us hunting, fishing, hiking and boating. We went for rides on Dad’s little motorcycle and did arts and crafts with mom from the plants and flowers we collected.
I must have run back and forth from our cabin to Grandma and Grandpa’s cabin 10 times a day, even when they weren’t there. It was in Woodland that I spent the most time with Mom’s parents, coloring, eating hard candy and drinking homemade rootbeer through paper straws.
We learned how to make tinfoil dinners and s’mores and ate hotdogs sitting by the fire with Mom and Dad. The happiest years of my life were spent on that mountain with my family.

I pretty much grew up with our Labrador, Jude… I think we were born on the same day.
Anyway,
It’s pretty hard to fit 2 adults, 4 kids and a full grown Lab in the front of a truck. I’m not sure how my sisters were squeezed in, but mom put a small whicker chair on the floor and I sat with the dog by moms feet for the hour it took to reach the cabin. Other times, they would pile us all into the bed of the pick-up on top of sleeping bags, the boxes and cases packed strategically around us for safety and maximum comfort. We absolutely LOVED it!

During the summer we would take a road trip nearly every year, with us kids riding in the camper,
we would be knocking on the window between the camper and the cab of the truck to get their attention so we could ask for snacks.

I think mom knew every kids song and camp song ever written, because on long trips she would sing with us to pass the time and to this day, I still know every one of them by heart.

Mom was so creative and artistic that she could make or sew almost anything.
She was always creating amazing paintings and in between paintings, she was making doll houses, basket weaving, crocheting and sewing our clothes.

Holidays were magical! Mom decorated all over the house while Dad was buildin a village that spanned half of the entire livingroom.
We listened to Bing Crosby sing Christmas Carols while mom made candy… divinity, haystacks, peanut brittle, peanut butter balls and Fudge!

No matter how tight they were on money, they always pulled off a great Christmas for us. One year, they got each of us a bicycle. They spent all night putting them together. Dad looked outside and saw that the neighbors were waking up just as they were finishing the bikes.

Mom was an amazing cook too. I loved everything she made but on holidays we got cheesy potatoes, home baked pies and rolls, cream puffs and my favorite, cheese fondue!

Eventually, one by one my sisters grew up and started having babies.
Mom adored her grandchildren and great grandchildren. Nothing made her happier than crocheting booties and tying baby quilts. She loved every one of them and spoke often to her friends and Aunt RaNae about their accomplishments.
She was equally as proud of watching Amber take her first steps as watching David play football or Daniel win a ribbon for a painting in elementary school. She loved each and every grandchild and great grandchild completely.
Mom loved babysitting so she could watch them play in her livingroom and she loved spoiling them and then sending them home.

In 2003, I finally caught up with my sisters and decided to get married. Mom helped me order my invitations and pick out my wedding dress.

Then she was diagnosed with stage 4 Lymphoma.

It was so hard planning my wedding with Mom so sick that she was hospitalized but I knew how much it meant to her that I carry on with my plans to get married. So I kept getting ready, visiting her in the hospital to show her whenever I bought something new for the wedding.

Mom was released from the hospital the day before I got married.

Mom was a fighter. She beat the cancer, going into remission in 2004.

I know I got off track of this narrative, that by definition it is supposed to be an outline of her life. I skipped over long friendships, jobs that ended and new jobs that began. There were so many lives Mom influenced and so many memories I have that I can’t begin to relate even half of them in such a short amount of time.

Our Mom taught us how to be wives, mothers and grandmothers. She taught us about God and Jesus, meditation and how to find our own Spirituality. She started out as a Mother, became a mentor and turned out to be a best friend.

Mom kissed scraped knees and soothed broken hearts. She was a grandma who went to belly dancing classes with her daughters and grand-daughters. Mom healed the broken wings of doves so they could fly again, raised magpies and groomed poodles. Ran girl scouts and taught oil painting classes. Her artistic creations on canvis and with seed beads will be heirlooms for generations. But the one thing I treasured most, I lost too soon. My mom’s beautiful smile whenever she saw someone she loved.

We are here to honor a wonderful, beautiful, talented woman named Joyce. We are here… because we love her. As long as that love is still alive in our hearts, she is still here, within each one of us as we carry on her legacy and traditions with the next generation.

My heart goes out to my family the Dooleys. I’ve known Joyce my whole life. It has been an honor to be able to call her my friend my mentor and my second mother. I am thankful that she shared her
love of painting with me. And will cherish all those memories and more, I have spent with her. Thank you for being a grandmother to my children . And teaching me to look at the world through different eyes.❤️ Love to All.

So sorry to hear of Joyce’s passing. We send our love, prayers and hugs your way.
I (Mark) remember that at age 6, I attended my first wedding reception. It was Uncle David and Aunt Joyce. I remember I was enthralled with her beauty. She kept that beauty over the years and I’m sure that it is her inner beauty shining through.
May the Lord bless you all during this temporary separation from your dear wife, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.

Mark & Laurie Dooley

So sorry for the Malloy family’s loss. He will be missed by many, including his NDPA family. I send prayers for comfort for family and friends who mourn with you.