The memory of longtime Perry lawyer and goodwill ambassador Charles I. Joy was celebrated in November when his likeness was unveiled as the latest addition to the Soumas Court Wall of Witnesses.
The relief of Joy was commissioned by Hometown Heritage and the Perry Historic Preservation Commission and created by Newton artist Rick Stewart, who has made several of the bas-relief likenesses.
Joy, who was born in 1906 and died in 1986, was “was very active in the community, backing the creation of new banks, churches and even helping to establish the original hog processing plant in Perry,” according to the ceremony’s brief introduction delivered by John Palmer of the Perry Historic Preservation Commission.
“Charlie Joy never met a stranger,” said Perry Historic Preservation Commission President Gary Martin, “and he never lost his faith in the goodness of others and in the greatness of Perry, Iowa.”
Joy graduated from Perry High School in 1923 and the University of Iowa Law School in 1930. He married Loraine Farr, and they had three children, Virginia, James and William. The eldest and youngest children followed in their father’s footsteps and became layers, while James Joy worked for many years as a television news editor in Northern California.
James and William Joy — Jim and Bill to friends — attended the Wall of Witnesses unveiling of their father’s image. Their sister, Virginia Joy Poffenberger, died in 2013.
Jim Joy, his voice sometimes quavering with emotion, described his father as “the most energetic, positive, dedicated person I ever knew.” He must have inherited his father’s love for Perry, he said, “because I didn’t leave my heart in San Francisco but left it in Perry many, many years ago.”
Bill Joy, who stepped down from the Dallas County District Court bench in 2010, said his father’s “love for Perry as the best place to live and his caring for other people” was shared “by many people in this room who feel the same civic obligation, the same passion and the same dedication as my dad did.”
Audience members also shared many touching and humorous memories of Charlie Joy.
Eleanor Whiton, now well into her 90s, said she and her husband farmed 80 acres back in the 1960s that were owned by Charlie Joy.
“If we made 120 bushels an acre, he’d treat us all to steak and lobster,” Whiton said with a smile.
Hometown Heritage executive Director Bill Clark recalled Charlie Joy’s skill as a Rotary Club singer.
“I heard him and said to myself, ‘Hey, he can’t sing either,'” Clark said.
John Powell, scion of another Perry family of illustrious lawyers, recalled when he and Charlie Joy conned each other over a piece of real estate “and ended up splitting the difference.”
Janice Fagen Summerson, who worked as a legal secretary for Charlie Joy in her youth, said Joy “always had a skip in his step and a song in his heart. He was so proud of his family.”
As the shadows gathered in Soumas Court, the assembly stepped outside to see the bas-relief unveiled and to hear the artist describe the pleasures and pains of creating portraits for the Wall of Witnesses. The plaque is inscribed with a quotation from Charlie Joy:
“Only one thing is worse than never volunteering to help others and that is to volunteer and never follow through.”
The words of William Blake’s poem, “The Ecchoing Green,” also seemed appropriate for the occasion.
The sun does arise,
And make happy the skies.
The merry bells ring
To welcome the Spring.
The sky-lark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around
To the bells’ cheerful sound,
While our sports shall be seen
On the Ecchoing Green.
Old John, with white hair,
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk,
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say:
‘Such, such were the joys
When we all, girls and boys,
In our youth time were seen
On the Ecchoing Green.’
Till the little ones, weary,
No more can be merry.
The sun does descend,
And our sports have an end:
Round the laps of their mothers
Many sisters and brothers,
Like birds in their nest,
Are ready for rest;
And sport no more seen,
On the darkening Green.
Back inside the bright and cheerful Towncraft Center, the crowd cut the cake, sipped the punch and shared more stories of the Joys of Perry history.
“The Wall of Witnesses recognizes those who have gone before us and stand as witnesses to our care of the community and those who set the course both in the present and in the future,” according to a statement from the Historic Preservation Commission.
