Joyce Ann Davis was born to Abe T. and Minnie Jantz Johnson, in Isabella, Oklahoma, on April 17, 1935, the last child in her family, following 6 siblings, brothers Tobe, John, and Delmar, and sisters Malvina, Florence and Fern. She passed from life on July 23, 2026, at the Paramount Community Living and Rehab, in Newton, Kansas.

Joyce’s young childhood was mostly uneventful; except for a fall she experienced at a very young age. Family who remembered that event viewed it to be traumatic, maybe even causing lasting effects in Joyce’s later life.

Joyce attended the Isabella Grade School, where all her siblings had gone. Because she was so much younger than other family members, she is remembered as having been the cherished little sister, the sometimes spoiled and always indulged playmate to her brothers and sisters.

When Joyce was in her early teens, her father was diagnosed with cancer. After his passing, and when she was a young adult, Joyce lived with her mother in Isabella. Later they moved to Halstead, Kansas, where Joyce met Alvin Herzfeld. The couple married in 1958, and over a period of years, adopted two sons, Winston and Shawn.

After Alvin’s passing, Joyce married Walt Davis, in Pryor, Oklahoma. The couple lived both in Oklahoma, and later in Newton, Kansas, where Joyce remained after Walt was gone.

Throughout her life, Joyce worked at various jobs—in the kitchen at the Halstead Hospital, as a housekeeper at a motel, and at a café in Pryor, Oklahoma.

She loved cats and dogs, and her family especially remembers her always sharing her home with a dog, first with the little Chihuahua named Jumbo, then with her brother’s cocker spaniel named Pal, later with her husband’s dog Curly, and finally with Jazzie, the rescue dog who kept her and a cat company in Halstead.

Growing garden plants, especially tomatoes, occupied her summers, and Joyce’s happiest moments came from life’s simple pleasures: receiving letters and phone calls and sharing meals and visits with her neighbors and family, and shopping with her sisters Florence and Fern.

Joyce was preceded in death by her parents and 9 siblings, three of whom died in infancy and early childhood, and by husbands Alvin Herzfeld in 1994, and Walt Davis in 2007. She is survived by her son Winston Herzfeld, of Hutchinson, Kansas, and Shawn Herzfeld of Texas. She will be fondly remembered by her many nieces and nephews, as well as by neighbors and friends, especially by her dear friends and the staff at Paramount Community Living and Rehab.

Baker Funeral Home Valley Center - Condolences may be left for the family at www.bakerfhvc.com.