Joy Janice Sherwood

Joy Janice Reddy Sherwood born to George and Nora Bell Reddy December 2, 1931, in Wichita Falls, Texas. She passed on to her heavenly home on March 22, 2024, in her home surrounded by loved ones.

She is survived by 2 daughters, Jerry Sue Hoffman, and Connie Lynn Kessler; granddaughters, Candace Ramsey, and Holly Delorme; grandson, Caleb Kessler; nieces and nephews, and grandchildren. She loved you all. She also was survived by her two parakeets, Tweedle Dee, and Tweedle Dum.

At age 16, she dropped out of Wichita Fall High School to marry James A. Sherwood (also of Wichita Falls, Texas.) They were married for 67 years.

Despite a difficult childhood and frail health, she worked hard to care for her family, then later her widowed mother.

I remember her starching her husband, Jim’s, blue jeans while he was driving trucks for a living, taking her daughters to school and being a homemaker; cooking pork chops, buttered potatoes and filling our lives with books. Long before Google she would answer my many questions with “Well, Look it up.” Our house had many encyclopedias and dictionaries. We all learned together. My mother confronted school officials to insure her children attended a better school, and discussed the best teaching methods with her well educated sisters and brother in law.

As time went on, with her tough health problems, Joy endured moving, and her husband’s job loss. Moving to Oklahoma City she found herself feeding and watering up to 34 horses that she and her husband Jim would raise and board for their dream business. While Jim drove long distances, she kept the family and business going, taking care of her husband when he returned home. Often she would stay up late nights tending to the horses, and foals when mares decided the night was the best time to deliver.

Joys dream was to be able to live in her home the rest of her life. Due to the good care of her Dr. and nurses, Hospice was able to make that wish come to pass as she went to her reward there in her own home.

My mom had a delightful sense of humor, once telling a bothersome friend to “buzz off buster” when he teased her. She’d tell her doctors she was older than dirt too. Her personality included a relationship with Her Lord, Jesus.

She attended church at Lamar Baptist in Wichita Falls, and later Metropolitan church in Oklahoma City.

Joy lived through the great depression, a world war, conflicts Korea, Vietnam, and the gulf wars, 16 presidents, from Hoover to Biden, from the age of telegraphs, to telephones, and 67 years of marriage.

She was the last of her generation and the end of an era. We will truly miss her.