Joyce Featherstone

Joyce Byrum Featherstone Passed away peacefully in her home on July 1, 2010, at the age of 88 after several years of declining health due to Alzheimer's disease. She is survived by her four children, David, of San Francisco; Jean (Howard Nagatani), of Chicago; James (Erika Leppmann), of Manzanita, Oregon; and Judith (Pat Montgomery), of Auburn, Washington, and by her four grandchildren, Daniel & Elizabeth Montgomery and Jonathon & Tanya Nagatani, and several nieces and nephews. Joyce was born to Bessie & Russell Byrum on August 5, 1921, in Anderson, Indiana. She attended both Anderson High School and Ball State College, in Muncie. In 1940, Joyce married Robert M. Featherstone, also of Anderson. The couple moved to Iowa City, where Joyce earned a Bachelor's Degree in home economics from the University of Iowa. Bob received a Ph.D. in biochemistry, then served on the faculty of the University Medical School's Pharmacology Department. In 1957, the Featherstone family moved to California, where Bob served as chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, until his too-early death in 1974. Joyce had consuming passions for gardening, music, and travel that she expressed through a variety of activities and associations over the past five decades. She maintained an immaculate flower-filled garden at her home and specialized in growing cymbidiums, which surrounded her patio every summer in full bloom. She developed an interest in flower arranging and Ikebana and, as a member of the Aesthetics Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Mateo, she created flower arrangements for Sunday services for many years. She also served as a member of the church's Board, was a past president of the San Mateo branch of AAUW, and volunteered with many other community groups. A season-ticket holder of the San Francisco Symphony for some fifty years, Joyce took great pleasure from playing music for her own enjoyment. After many years playing piano, she began studying the cello in the 1960s, practicing and taking weekly lessons well into her eighties. She was a long-time Board member for the Irving M. Klein International String Competition, which annually provides awards and performing opportunities for young stringed-instrument players. Each summer, she provided housing for one or two competitors and hosted a dinner for all the musicians and their families. Joyce's love of travel began with family summer vacations and expanded on international trips with Bob for medical conventions and during two sabbatical years, in London and Geneva. After his death, she undertook a series of nearly annual overseas trips, ranging from multi-week art-historical study tours of Venice to bicycle trips in Ireland or along the Danube to explorations of Southeast Asia. Beginning in the early 1980s, the entire Featherstone family gathered every five years to celebrate Joyce's birthday. The most recent of these, for her 85th birthday in 2006, was to Rocky Mountain National Park, in Colorado, which the family frequently visited on summer vacations while living in Iowa. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that gifts in Joyce's honor be sent to the Irving M. Klein International String Competition, www.kleincompetition.org, or the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Mateo, www.uusanmateo.org.