Joyce Stevens Hammack

LEANDER -- Joyce Stevens Hammack passed from this life on the morning of Tuesday, June 14, 2016, at the age of 86. Service: 12:30 p.m. Saturday at Laurel Land Memorial Park. Visitation: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at Laurel Land. Joyce Hammack was born Gloria Joyce Pichini (Americanized from Piccinini) on July 24, 1929, in Blue Island, Ill., a small town south of Chicago. The daughter of Italian immigrants, she grew up in a three-story yellow brick bungalow amidst a large vegetable garden, fragrant flower gardens and the best food on the planet, by way of her mother Gina's cooking. Her house was the hub of activity and gatherings among her three sisters, a large extended family and close family friends, during the Great Depression and Word War II years. There was always a bed and a meal for anyone who needed it, which explains her great empathy for those in need the she carried her entire life. In school, she was the co-editor of her high school newspaper and participated in many activities, being gifted as an artist and singer. In 1950, she married Robert "Bob" Stevens and moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., working as a secretary at the school while he earned his degree in engineering. Upon graduation, they moved to Fort Worth, where Bob took a job with Convair (later General Dynamics and Lockheed) to work on the nuclear airplane project. They arrived to a non-air conditioned apartment in the middle of a horrible heat wave.. welcome to Texas! But, they stuck it out and put down deep roots in Fort Worth. To get out of the heat, Joyce took a job as a secretary at Convair, then the largest air conditioned building in the world, and worked there until she became pregnant with their first child. She was a very beautiful women and once, during a vacation to Los Angeles, she was approached by autograph seekers convinced she was Elizabeth Taylor. As a stay-at-home-mom with two children, Joyce became a very active parent, involved in the schools and neighborhood organizations. She was president of the PTA at Bruce Shulkey Elementary, once pulling an all-nighter to sort prizes for the annual school carnival the next day. She became educated in the fine arts as her children became involved in ballet and music. She volunteered with the Youth Orchestra of Greater Fort Worth and took art and art history classes, becoming a fine oil painter and calligrapher. Her love and study of art also led her to become a docent at the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art where she gave tours to visitors for many years. She also was an avid gardner and was active with the Fort Worth Gardening Club. Her community involvement included serving on the Wedgwood Sector Planning Committee, where she had a hand in the planning of Candleridge and setting the requirements that the developers had to include the greenbelt, French Lake Park and the walking paths that run through that unique neighborhood in southwest Fort Worth. As her children got older, she took a secretarial job at TCU, working in the Fine Arts Department and also was able to travel with her husband to Europe several times related to his work, once staying for three months on one of his business assignments in Madrid. She loved to entertain the Spaniards that Bob worked with who came to Fort Worth for meetings. Her first marriage ended in 1987, but two years later she married Henry "Hank" Hammack, a professor of Theater at TCU that she had known when she worked at TCU. Their paths crossed and he had been recently been widowed. Hank was a wonderful husband who adored and doted on her every day. She became involved with University Christian Church, where Hank was a founder, designer and director of the Annual Boar's Head and Yule Log Festival. They sang in the UCC choir for many years and even participated in several holiday concerts with the New York Pops Orchestra under Skitch Henderson, performing in Carnegie Hall. She greatly enjoyed the life around UCC and the TCU theater department, going to shows and concerts and meeting interesting people. The wonderful collection of oil paintings she created during her life will serve as her legacy to her family for generations to come. She was a generous friend, wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother and her family is grateful for all that she gave them. Survivors: She is survived by her sister, Jean Forrester; children, Barbie Harrison and Daniel Stevens and his wife Marilou; grandchildren, Tyler Harrison, Sean Harrison, Kari Phillips and her husband Matt, Ryan Anthony Martinez Stevens and Felicia Danielle Martinez Stevens; and her great-grandchildren, Sadler and Parker Phillips; and a large extended family in Texas, Illinois, North Carolina, Florida, California and Italy.