Joyce Brenner was my dearest friend, starting in junior high at T.J., then throughout
our years at Wakefield High School and indeed for the rest of our lives. She married
very soon after graduating from Wakefield and had two children, Natalie and Michael.
After her divorce, she moved to California to be near her sister Rita, her only sibling.
Unfortunately, Rita Brenner died in her 30s from heart disease but Joyce stayed on in
California, first in the San Francisco Bay Area (where I visited her often) and then in
Los Angeles where her son still lives. She was a highly respected real estate developer
in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. She survived a bout with breast cancer in her
late 40s but succumbed to leukemia in 2001 at age 59 in Los Angeles. Her husband,
Nat Rossin, visited me about a year after Joyce died and I took him to all the places
she talked about to him but never had a chance to show him including Wakefield HS, her
house on South 13th Street, the Arlington Theater, the Pike, and the place where
Tops Drive In used to be! Joyce was always there for me as I tried to be for her. S
he was a healer and a poet and a beautiful person, inside and out. I miss her always.
Ginny 'Thelma' Walker Boylan