Family Stories: Joan Fay Stroup

There are few people who have had more influence on my life than my grandmother Joan. She and I shared a middle name as well as a special bond from the day I was born. I arrived during an especially dark period in her life. Her husband and true love was dying of cancer at only 50 years old. When he passed away weeks before my first birthday, the gaping hole he left behind could not be filled, but she found joy in spending time with her only daughter and first granddaughter. I’m not sure if our bond was born from that devastating loss or if it came from something else. Ironically, she shared a similar connection with her grandmother Laura, and it is Laura’s name that comes before Fay to make up my middle name. I like to think those names and the relationships that were attached to them served as a starting point for the role they would play in my life. Perhaps they are part of the reason I’m here today, focusing on a business that carries her name and sharing these images from her childhood. I’m in the progress of getting these printed and framed to hang on the family wall in our new house. I have so many pictures that I think we may have more than one family wall, but that’s okay because I prefer family photographs to most other artwork anyway. They are so special to me.

Baby Joan in 1934

Joan with her beloved dog, Sandy.

Joan (on the right) with a friend.

Those curls…

Posing with her tennis racket.

With her brother Bob.

With Bob and her older sister Betty.

Baby Joan with Betty and Bob.

With Bob and her mother Elsie.

An adorable Joan (second from right) with her childhood friends.