Joan Manley

Joan (Bergsma) Manley began her life's journey on January 28, 1935 in Grand

Rapids Michigan, from where she set forth on her lifetime of adventures, be-

ginning her education as a six-year old kindergarten pupil at the Woodstock

School in the mountains of India, where her parents were medical missionaries.

And finishing up with a M.A. in English Lit at Middlebury College's School of.

English at Oxford University. It could be said of Joan, as with Chaucer's Oxford

Clerk, that "gladly would [she] learn and gladly teach."

And teach she did, beginning by teaching village children in a missionary school

in Nigeria, and then by teaching high school English at L'Ecole International de

Geneve in Switzerland, and at the Awty International School in Houston, Texas.

Joan was ahead highly regarded and well-liked teacher whose clear instruction

and patient encouragement taught her students to be discerning readers, and

effective writers.

She herself was a gifted writer, having written several stories and a novel based

upon her experiences as a young student attending school in the Himalayas, a

missionary teacher in Nigeria, and an educator in the international UN city of

Geneva. A Lifetime of adventures and travels, having lived on four continents,

circumnavigating the globe by ship, and scaling the heights from the green

African canopy to the white snow-capped Indian Mountains.

These external travels and internal musings expanded her horizons and enabled

the young school-girl to grow up to become the wise, feisty, caring teacher, wife,

mother, woman we knew and loved.

Her life's journey ended on October 9, 2025 dying peacefully at home in Vallejo,

California, attended by her husband, David, and her daughter, Hope. Joan is now

on her final passage to where her parents and brothers have gone ahead, and is

bidding adieu to husband, daughter, granddaughter Brooke, step-son David,

sisters-in-law, Lynda Bergsma and Lily Chu, and the many nieces and

nephews who loved "Aunt Joan."