Joy Stukey died May 30, 2025 at Otterbein Franklin SeniorLife Community in Franklin, Indiana where she had lived since 2007.  She was 97.

She passed peacefully and without great pain while under hospice care.

She is survived by her brother, Gary Penn, and his wife Francis, by her sister-in-law, Mary Ellen Carpenter, by her sons, Randal and Lyndon Wall, by stepdaughters Judy Claussen, Valerie Mathews, Mary Mills and Teresa Stukey, by her stepson Phil Stukey and by her life-long friend Martha Wilson.

Born Joy June Penn to Hubert and Pauline (Swoveland) Penn March 23, 1928, Joy grew up skinny on a farm near Sturgis, Michigan. "We were poor," she always recalled, "but we didn't really notice because everyone around us was poor. We always had enough to eat."

She loved school, from the one room Hoff School to the "much larger" Brighton (Indiana) High School from which she and Martha graduated in 1946. "Martha and I were spoiled, we kinda had the run of the place."

After graduation she worked for a year at Harvey Paper Products before marrying Robert Wall in 1948. This began what Joy always called the happiest ten years of her life. Robert ("Bob") became a Methodist minister. Joy loved being a minister's wife, and the two had Randal ("Randy") in 1952 and Lyndon in 1955. In 1959 tragedy struck when Bob swerved his car to miss an ice house which had fallen off a truck in front of him and crashed head on into a car traveling the opposite direction.  He died soon after being transported to the hospital.

At the time of Bob's death Joy had completed just one semester of college.  In the next few years she completed college (eventually earning a Master's Degree), taught school in Avilla, Indiana, raised two small boys, and remained active in church activities. Randy and Lyndon both recall the rapid flip, flip, flip of her flip flops as she sped around the house.

In January of 1965 Joy married Maynard Stukey, an old high school flame, and the two merged their families, her two children and his five. The nine moved to a bath and a half home in Ft. Wayne.  She continued to teach in Avilla, eventually teaching there for 30 years.

Despite the predictable challenges of combining the seven children into one family Joy and Maynard remained married and happy together until his death in 2007 from Parkinson's Disease just after the two had moved to Otterbein.

Joy's remains will be cremated and joined with Maynard's in the Columbarium at Grace Methodist Church in Franklin, a church she considered the most outstanding of any she had known.

Swartz Family Community Mortuary and Memorial Center 300 South U.S. 31 (Morton Street) in Franklin, IN is handling the arrangements.

Online condolences may be sent to the family at www.swartzmortuary.com.  Information 317-738-0202.