Margaret Joyce Farrell

Margaret Joyce Farrell, nee Ferrell, joined the celebration in Heaven on Monday, Nov. 13, 2017.

Joyce was born in Summers County, West Virginia, on Feb. 10, 1929. She had battled with melanoma for 8-1/2 years.

Joyce was the only child of John Wesley and Anna Mabel Saunders Ferrell and grew up on their family farm in the big bend of the Greenbrier River. She graduated valedictorian at Hinton High School in 1945, and was the valedictorian of her class at Wheaton College in Illinois. She married William Hammond Farrell, Jr., of Montclair, New Jersey, on the lawn at Camp Lightfoot, June 21, 1949. They moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, where she became a technician in the laboratory of Dr. Gregory Pincus, assisting in the development of the first birth control pill. Their three sons are John William, Peter Wayne (Mary Jo), and Bruce Andrew (Barbara).

Joyce, as a housewife and attentive mother, was very active within Grace Presbyterian Church, of Montclair, New Jersey. There, she took over an Evangelical bookstore on the verge of bankruptcy and with ecumenical zeal, transformed it into a thriving source of Sacred thought and leadership. This led to her employment in the worldwide publishing and sales of Christian books for David C. Cook, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and for the Zondervan Corporation, now a division Harper Collins Christian Publishing. Later, founding Joyce Farrell & Associates, she became an editor and literary agent for religious book authors. There she co-developed, with a Jewish partner, the Bible Study based youth board game, “Choices.”

She and her husband, Bill, enjoyed sailing on their sloop, “Moonshine,” for many years on Long Island Sound. In retirement, they wintered at their condo in Osprey, Florida, and loved to summer at her ancestral farm home on the Greenbrier. They continued to worship God together with Venice Presbyterian Church, in Venice, Florida, the Fairview Missionary Baptist Church, in Forest Hill, WV, and with the Old Stone Presbyterian Church, in Lewisburg.

Joyce was predeceased by her husband of 64 years, in December, 2013. She is survived by her sons and their families which include five grandchildren: Rachel Anne, Caleb John, Leah Christine, Luke Andrew, and Ryan Alexander, and four great-grandchildren: Wesley, Nathan, Paivi, and Emmett.

Viewing hour is from Noon to 1 p.m. and services will be held from 1 to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 18, at Fairview Baptist Church in Forest Hill.

In lieu of flowers, Joyce asks for memorials to be made in her name to the Old Stone Presbyterian Church in Lewisburg and/or the Peyton Hospice House in Lewisburg.

Arrangements have been made by the Pivont Funeral Home, Hinton.