Editor’s note: This is one of a continuing online series of profiles of the more than 12,000 Hoosiers who have died from COVID-19. The stories are from 12 Indiana newspapers, including The Republic, who collaborated to create the collection to highlight the tremendous loss that the pandemic has created. The series appears daily at therepublic.com.
Name: Joyce Ann Jones
Age: 71
City/Town: Fort Wayne
Died: Nov. 7
Jones had plenty she loved in life: cooking, playing bingo, karaoke and watching Colt’s football with her husband, Paul.
She was witty. She was caring. She was selfless, according to her obituary. But above all, she was strong.
Her family saw her at her weakest point, afflicted by the novel coronavirus and forced to be on a ventilator in a hospital intensive care unit.
She was on the ventilator 41 days, off the vent for 10 days, but then back on the breathing machine before she died, her daughter, Lori Anthony, said.
She just missed — by less than two weeks — celebrating her 72nd birthday.
A native of Decatur, Jones spent her last days at Lutheran Hospital. She was surrounded by her family at Lutheran Hospital when she passed.
“The more awareness that this virus kills, the better,” Anthony said through email.
Jones babysat her great grandchildren. She loved family was the first to arrive at every gathering, her obituary said.
And she could be direct.
“Joyce was never afraid to tell it how it was, and people admired her for that,” the obituary said.
— Contributed by the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette
