Joyce Barnes

If her husband John hadn't accepted a position with Hercules, Joyce Barnes may never have come to Utah and the state would have been the poorer for it. Life is full of such fortuities. Indeed, if John and his fraternity brothers at the University of Wyoming in Laramie hadn't come calling at the Sigma Kappa sorority house at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley looking for dates, Joyce and he might never have met. But they did, and Utah is richer for it.

Joyce grew up in Colorado. On graduation from high school, she went to the University of Northern Colorado on a piano scholarship and played for spending money at weddings and funerals. She married John in 1951 and moved to Clovis, New Mexico, in 1952 where she student-taught while John was in the army; then to Laramie in 1953, where she couldn't teach because she was married to a "transient," i.e., a student, but earned her own degree in Colorado; then to Denver, where she taught third grade for three years; and finally to Salt Lake City in 1961, where she worked for the Granite School District until her retirement in 1993. She taught music at Central Junior High for three years and then requested to work in special education with the disabled. While working and raising two daughters, she earned an M.S. in special education from Utah State University, after which she was soon transferred to the district office where she developed the curriculum for special ed. A few years later she became Granite School District Director of Student Support Services with a staff of 500 and a budget of $30,000,000. She soon earned an Ed.D in public school administration in a new program at BYU, where she had the novel experience as a Unitarian of signing the student code and living in a dorm, but slipping off campus for a cup of coffee.

Upon retirement, she became a mediator privately and for court adjudicated divorce and family conflicts. She's a volunteer mediator for Juvenile Court. She's served as adjunct faculty for special ed at the U., USU, and SLCC. She has served as chair of the Legislative Coalition for People with Disabilities and serves as a member of the East Valley Advisory Board for Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation. As a self-professed political junkie, she serves as Voter Service Chair for the League of Women Voters, arranging debates and preparing voter guides and finding it hard to remain nonpartisan, and as the Utah representative for the Children's Advocacy Network, advocating to state and federal legislators for both gifted and disabled youth and adults. She is one of six national trainers of school administrators and support staff for the Council of Special Education Administrators and has been trained by the Utah Humanities Council to lead workshops on how to raise a non-racist child, but the only taker in Utah so far has been the South Valley Unitarian Church. Oh, and she's also a trustee of Humanists of Utah. See, isn't Utah lucky that John went with Hercules?

--Earl Wunderli