For more than four decades, Joyce was part of the heart of AHEAD With Horses. She was a volunteer, advocate, Board Member, longtime Board President, donor, and, above all, someone who believed deeply in our students and what they could accomplish.

Joyce’s relationship with AWH began in 1982, when she was serving as philanthropy chair for the La Cañada Flintridge Women’s Club, which was raising funds for AHEAD With Horses. At the time, she knew little about the organization. That changed with her first visit to the ranch.

After seeing our students working with the horses and staff, Joyce was hooked and wanted to do whatever she could to help.

And help she did.

Over the years, Joyce volunteered her time in the office and around the ranch, spoke about AWH to community, volunteer, and donor organizations, and became one of the organization’s most dedicated advocates. She joined the AHEAD With Horses Board of Directors in 2000 and served as President from 2004 through 2020.

Witnessing Miracles

What kept Joyce so committed to AWH year after year was always the children.

When asked what made her feel good about supporting AHEAD With Horses, Joyce wrote about watching students advance both physically and mentally. She had seen children progress from being unable to speak to putting full sentences together, and from being unable to walk to being able to run.

Her conclusion was simple:

“This is an amazing program.”

Joyce often spoke about the changes she witnessed during her many years at AWH as miracles. She took tremendous joy in knowing that whatever she contributed, whether her time, leadership, advocacy, or financial support, helped children learn to use their bodies and minds in new ways.

“Knowing I am helping special children develop and learn to have a wonderful life,” she wrote, was one of the things that made supporting AWH so meaningful to her.

A Belief in What Our Students Can Achieve

Joyce’s decades with AWH also gave her a perspective that few people have had. She saw generations of students come through the program and witnessed not only their individual accomplishments, but also enormous changes in the opportunities available to children with disabilities.

She believed passionately in their potential.

“I believe in the development of the children I have seen over the years,” Joyce wrote. “I will continue to support this program for as long as possible.”

She hoped others would discover the same thing she had found all those years earlier on her first visit to AHEAD With Horses: a place where horses, staff, volunteers, families, and supporters come together to help children discover what they can do.

“Everyone who has a chance to see AWH’s horses, staff and children become part of AWH is surprised by what they see,” she wrote. “I hope everyone is as fortunate as I have been to be part of AWH.”

Develop. Learn. Achieve.

At different times, Joyce was asked to choose just three words to describe AHEAD With Horses.

Among her answers were “Miracles. Beautiful. Rewarding.”

But another set seems especially fitting as we remember her:

Develop. Learn. Achieve.

For more than 40 years, Joyce helped make all three possible for countless AWH students.

Her service to AHEAD With Horses spanned much of the organization’s history. The titles she held tell only part of that story. Her greater legacy can be found in the children whose accomplishments she celebrated, the people she introduced to our mission, the organization she helped lead, and the belief in our students that she carried with her from that first visit in 1982.

We are deeply grateful that Joyce chose to make AHEAD With Horses such an important part of her life.

She once wrote, “I hope everyone is as fortunate as I have been to be part of AWH.”

For more than four decades, we were the fortunate ones to have Joyce as part of ours.