Pioneer

There wasn't a lot people knew about Joy Morrison's personal life. Her work was her life, just like many journalists.

The woman worked 60-80 hours a week without blinking. When I knew her, she was the old lady who knew everything about the community and had an old-fashioned idea of community journalism. I rarely gave her family a second thought.

But I do remember one time when I had just dropped Anne Marie off at daycare, and I was sort of feeling down. I didn't say anything about it to Joy, but she seemed to know. She said, "It was always kind of hard — I remember leaving my daughter at Mrs. M's(can't remember the name) daycare. It was hard when she cried, and it was hard when she was happy and didn't mind."

I went to Joy's funeral last week. She was 87 when she passed away, and 84 when she quit working. She dedicated her life to newspapering, and it showed at her funeral, where the newspaper photographers were her pallbearers, and a former editor gave the eulogy.

But she also loved her family, and her daughter's beautiful poem read at the funeral showed that she felt the undying, absolute love of her mother.

I always knew that Joy was a great role model for working women. She started at the newspaper in the 1940s when women didn't typically work, and continued looking for stories and working as an essential part of the community when she got married and raised her daughter. She seamlessly moved through technologies, from typewriters and cutting and pasting to computers and e-mail.

But she was also a great role model for working mothers. When I look at what life was like for working women in those days, I can't even imagine how difficult it must have been for her, especially when she became a mother. There were separate want ads for men and women. Often, women were expected to leave their jobs when they began to "show." Women with husbands and children typically didn't work. It's not that I believe women should all be in the workplace, but I treasure that we have a choice, and the right to choose what is best for our family and situation, whether it be a stay-at-home mom or dad, a loving childcare situation or a combination of the three. It has changed so much that I don't think we as women often give enough credit to those women who paved the way for us to have choices.