Bayliss, Joyce Connors
Joyce Connors Bayliss died peacefully in her sleep on Thursday, July 22, after a courageous battle with brain cancer, at the age of eighty-one. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to Lester and Hazel Connors, Joyce attended Classical High School and the Fairlawn Hospital Technology Program there, before becoming a laboratory technician at the hospital in 1959. Later in life, she would go on to obtain her associate's degree in Psychology from Harper College in 1982.
She and Paul Bayliss were married in 1960. In addition to being an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction, she had a diverse range of hobbies, applying her artistic energies and talents to numerous creations ranging from needlepoint, knitting, and sewing to gardening
and stained glass works. She was also, in her own words, and avid “observer of the world around me,” and enjoyed taking walks in nature, birdwatching, and travel. This latter hobby took her to countries as farflung as Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, and Scandinavia in Europe; Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Ecuador, and the Galapagos Islands in the Americas; and Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hong Kong, and Japan in Micronesia and East Asia. This was in addition to residing in states ranging from Texas and North Carolina in the South, to New Hampshire and Maine in New England, prior to moving to Connecticut.
Joyce's keen interest in observing the world compelled her to work for its betterment as well. Wherever she resided, she was involved in many church boards and
deaconships, through which she urged congregations to take a greater role in charitable work at home and abroad. Just one of her many achievements in this regard was helping to establish a chapter of Habitat for Humanity in Freehold, New Jersey, through the sponsorship of the Freehold Reformed Church. She managed to do all this while being a dedicated wife and mother, through the upheavals of no less than fourteen relocations, and surviving both breast and lung cancer, as well as a stroke.
She is survived by her husband Paul, her sons David and Jeffrey, his wife Kiyoko, and her three grandchildren, Calum, Aedan, and Isaac.
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