close friend and partner
I am remembering Joy today, February 12, 2025, on what would have been her 73rd birthday. I met her 45 years ago this month while I was a student in the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and she was an administrator on that School's staff. She had just turned 28 and we shared an interest in graphic design in which we both had professional experience outside our roles at Pratt, with Joy co-authoring and illustrating books with architecture faculty professor and alumnus Albert Lorenz (December 9, 1941 - June 30, 2023), and my working my way through the Bachelor of Architecture degree program as a graphic and interior designer for corporate entities. We were close for a decade but separated as we had too much in common. What I remember most fondly about Joy during our time together at Pratt in the 1980s was how she cracked jokes with Albert Lorenz and his fellow professors architect Warren W. Gran, FAIA (1933 - 2019), and architect/industrial designer William Katavalos (1924 - 2020), thereby bringing levity to our days and reminding faculty and students alike not to take ourselves too seriously. I was two and a half years older than Joy and included Warren and William as my friends outside the School. Joy and I also shared a common ethnicity of Irish and German American ancestry. I lost touch with her when she moved to Indiana, where she died on April 18, 2008, exactly three years to the day before my first partner Claire M. Harnan died in 2011, also at an age way too young. I will forever miss both women, and in particular Joy's frequent reminder to me to lighten up whenever my day is particularly difficult. She was a gentle woman and her spirit lives on in my heart with Claire's. -- Bruce Christopher Higgins, New York, NY, February 12, 2025
