Joyce Elaine Stein

Joyce Elaine Stein passed away on Jan. 29, 2017. It was the best possible, most peaceful death one could imagine. The hospice care people were fantastic and we were all able to say what needed to be said and sing what needed to be sung.

She was a brilliant woman, the first in her family to go to college; she started at UCLA at age 16. She was a classically trained pianist who demanded that her three sons take piano lessons from an early age.

She was a sophisticated consumer of the arts, enjoying folk art from around the world, the best Disney Hall had to offer, all the great museums and her grandsons’ band, Finish Ticket, when they played at the Troubadour and the Greek Theatre in LA. And she was herself an accomplished poet, with several publications under her belt, as well as poetic collaborations with visual artists.

She travelled many times to Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, Australia and islands in between. She went to Mongolia in 2006 for the 800th anniversary of the Mongol Empire. One of our favorite pictures of her was taken then, when she was traveling through the Gobi desert, dressed somewhat like a French Legionnaire. She was 75 at the time. Even after that she went on a camping trip to the Australian outback. She always preferred the floor of a hut to a hotel bed, because she wanted to know the people.

On a family car trip across the U.S. in 1947, she visited relatives in Memphis, Tennessee and what she saw there galvanized her into a committed and active anti-racist for the rest of her life. She volunteered at the ACLU through most of our childhood; she worked on numerous Democratic political campaigns; she took guff from no man. If she didn’t like what she saw, she spoke up. Loudly.

Joyce is survived by her sons Abbott and wife Mary Joy, Adam and wife Berta, Barney, and four grandsons: William, Zak, Nick and Gabe.

In lieu of a memorial, the family asks that you make donations to one of her favorite causes: ACLU, Planned Parenthood or Southern Poverty Law Center.