Joyce Klaverkamp died peacefully at home in Chesapeake, Virginia on November 21, 2025 beside a big window of soft light, surrounded with the love and care of her family after a long journey with dementia. She is survived by Gerald Klaverkamp, her husband of nearly sixty years, their four children – Gerry, Jr., David (Jill), Alissa (m. Duane Korytko), and Cara (m. Andrew Burkamp) – as well as her dear sister Joan Arison, and nephew Howard (m. Lauren Stephens). She was predeceased by her parents, Rita and Tom Smith, her siblings Gloria (Bill Schaumann), Tom Smith (Beverly), Robert Smith, and brother-in-law Algird Arison. Joyce is remembered as a vibrant, industrious, and creative woman of initiative, who embraced spontaneity, spiritual growth, and earth tones in equal measure.

Born in Manhattan, New York on September 13, 1937 to Rita and Thomas Smith, Joyce was the youngest of five children after Gloria, Tom, Robert, and Joan. She attended Connecticut State Teachers College where, to her surprise, she excelled in public speaking, despite it being a major fear of hers. As a young woman she travelled across Europe, inspiring in her an awe of nature’s majesty, epitomized by the Swiss Alps that were “so close to [her] hotel balcony that [she] could almost reach out and touch them.” She went on to hold secretarial positions for the presidents and vice presidents of such companies as Sikorsky Aircraft, Warner Bros, Pepperidge Farms, and Cott. Her entrepreneurial spirit and meticulous organizational skills later fueled her passion to open her own business in the 1980s, Balloonium Bunches of Gladness, among other rewarding career pursuits.

Joyce and Gerry met at a drug store in Stratford, CT and primarily corresponded through letters until they were married on February 5, 1966. They began their married life and family at Olathe Naval Air Station in Kansas, after which they moved to Bridgeport, CT to raise their growing family in the same house where Joyce, herself, was raised. In 1973 Joyce and Gerry moved to Summit Drive in Wallingford, CT where their fourth child, Cara, was born. Joyce’s Aunt Alice and Uncle Cliff told and Joyce affirmed, when she was a little girl visiting them in Wallingford, Joyce pointed to the distant horizon and said, “I want to live right there someday,” and she and Gerry did – in a beautiful neighborhood near a wooded park.

Joyce raised her four children to care about the details in everything around them – the palette of colors on the leaves in October, or the details of a quality garment or a pocketbook; she modeled the details of a perfectly balanced checkbook or of a nearly-Edwardian signature; she delighted in the details of language, those nuances of wording and grammar that, as Robert Frost – one of her favorite poets – said, “[could make] all the difference.” In fact, her exceptional understanding of language's power to stir a reader and affect change in the world was recognized in 1955 when, at eighteen years old, she received an award from Eleanor Roosevelt for her essay “Democracy Speaks.” She also won two art awards, one for her illustration of a peace dove and another for a drawing entitled “the brotherhood of man” which depicted people of all races and religions holding hands around the image of the world.

Joyce was a “make it happen” woman who instilled in her children the importance of seeing the world and making things happen, in both small and big ways. Her life experience taught her the importance of recognizing the humanity and inherent worth of every person, no matter their differences, circumstances, or even past behavior. This was exemplified, perhaps most profoundly, in two ways: first, in the intense “Be With” experiences she recalled from her days attending and leading “est” trainings, and, second, in using the Christmas season as an opportunity to bring Gerry, Jr., Dave, and Alissa to “be with” patients in various types of shut-in person facilities, like the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital in New York, in order to foster in her children the perspective that all people are deserving of being seen and valued. She carried this mindset throughout her life, opening the doors of her home to people in need in her community and family who had fallen on hard times. As an expression of her open heart and desire to explore the deepest realms of being, her husband Gerry recalls that Joyce led their search into various spiritual practices, pathways, and philosophical perspectives embracing Western, Eastern, and Indigenous traditions throughout their lives together.

Known to Garrett and Taylor Korytko as Grandma Honey, to Aedan, Keagan, and Brennan Klaverkamp as Nana, and to Desmond and Sophia Burkamp as Grandma, Joyce travelled from Connecticut to Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Oregon, North Carolina, Arizona, New York, Virginia, and Georgia to share in the joys of their growing up. Joyce loved cheering from the sidelines of her children’s and grandchildren’s sporting events and extra-curricular activities. She loved so many things…she loved getting her hands right in the dark soil of her garden as well as into her famous meatloaf mixture. (Whether gardening or making meatloaf, she’d say, “I just get right in there with my hands.”) She loved jumping right in to offer a hand, whether to paint a room, upholster a couch, refinish a bureau, or volunteer for a local project. She loved her mom, Nana Rio; she loved wordsmithing language, helping her children to learn the art of reflection, revision, and editing over essays for school spread out on the kitchen table; she loved digging her toes into the sand at Charlestown Beach, and she loved music that pierced her heart to the core of her being. Most of all, she loved her family dearly, those near and far, immediate and extended. And, of course, she loved her husband, Gerry. Joyce will be dearly missed by so many.

A memorial service for Joyce Klaverkamp will be held at the Congregational Church in South Glastonbury, Connecticut on December 27, 2025 at 10:30am, with a reception to follow nearby.