Blog: 'Courage' Posts
I turned the radio off in my car and watched the students walk into the white building.   They followed the sidewalk parallel to the south wall and disappeared around the corner to enter the front door. “She looks all of 18 years old,” I thought.  Her flawless skin, her cherry red miniskirt, and her brunette...
  Meet Max Cruz. Max is 7 years old and is the son of Joy’s House supporters Charlie and Kathy Cruz. Kathy has been involved with Joy’s House in a number of ways, including as a current Board Member, and her generous spirit is now evident in her children. Here’s the thing about Max: He...
To hear Mr. Charles’ daughter, Alisha, talk about him, you can’t help but to picture him as a young adult sitting in a big chair in the corner of the room with his two younger kids in his lap, his son on one knee and Alisha on the other. In this image, Mr. Charles is...
Some people just can’t help themselves. They make friends wherever they go. This is Miss Allene and she has been like this for as long as anyone can remember. In her younger years, she was the neighborhood mom. Her front porch was the place to come and talk about life’s challenges and glories. It was...
Many of us experience family traditions without thinking about it. Maybe it’s the first day of school photos that happen every fall or the bedtime stories every night. Maybe it’s something as creative as a secret family handshake or burying jack-o’-lanterns the day after Halloween. For others, it gets more personal. Mr. Dominic and his...
February 1, 2018
  I was there when he took his last breath.  His name is Doug and at some point over the last nearly twenty years, he became family to me.  The details of those years don’t matter to you, but they included a souped-up golf cart, Joy’s House, family meals, a really cool Harley, a backhoe...
January 2018 – Frankie Frankie married her best friend in October of 2016. As a matter of fact, she and George Raymond, or Ray as she calls him, had known each other for 18 years. At the time they married, they were raising three children under the age of fourteen. They were both in their...
If you’ve received one of our 2018 calendars, you’ve noticed by now that our 2018 “theme” for Joy’s House is courage. (And if you haven’t yet gotten a calendar and would like one – or several! – please email us.) We see courage in a lot of people, and in a lot of ways, at...