McLeod

Joyce Radatz McLeod, devoted church volunteer, wife and mother of four, died peacefully at her home Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2014, after a long illness. She was 75 years old.

As a volunteer for St. Mary’s Catholic Parish in St. Clair, Joyce enjoyed her work with engaged couples, arranging and leading their wedding ceremony rehearsals for 20 years. She served as a sacristan for nearly 30 years and helped to launder and iron church linens, priests’ vestments, cassocks, and more. She also served on the Altar Society, was a member of the Daughters of Isabella, and taught in the pre-marriage program alongside her husband of 52 years, Robert E. McLeod, who served as deacon at St. Mary’s.

Joyce was born on July 27, 1939, to Fred Radatz and Rose-Marie (Grattan) Radatz in Port Huron, Michigan, and attended St. Stephen School. Joyce was the second of five children. As a girl, living on Mansfield Street near the Blue Water Bridge, Joyce could be found pedaling her J.C. Higgins bicycle on the way to the park with one of her younger siblings in tow. A responsible child, Joyce was often left in charge of her three younger siblings while her mother was employed caring for others’ children and her father worked at the Chrysler Warehouse in Marysville, Michigan, shipping auto parts. On the weekend, her father was a distributor for the Detroit Times and the Detroit News.

A child during WWII, Joyce could recall a day when, walking home from school at the age of six, she was suddenly startled by the sound of sirens and people yelling and running in the streets. She ran home in fear that the bombs were about to fall only to find the shouts and sirens signified the long-awaited end to WWII.

At 16, Joyce took a job as ticket taker for the Desmond Theater in downtown Port Huron. At 18, Joyce began work as an elevator operator at Sperry’s Department Store in Port Huron, where people often commented that she must get her share of “ups and downs.” It was there she developed a taste for fine clothing, such as Pendleton wool, and pretty things she hadn’t known as a child growing up in a working-class family in an era of post-Depression austerity and war rationing.

She met her husband, Robert, of St. Clair, Michigan, in 1961. They were introduced through mutual friends, and she quickly took a shining to the distinguished looking young man in a London Fog coat, smoking a pipe. The two married on June 2, 1962, and lived in Port Huron until moving to St. Clair in 1967. She resided in St. Clair, where she and her husband raised four children, for the remainder of her life.

Joyce is survived by her husband, Robert E. McLeod, retired administrative director of radiology for St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Pontiac, their four children, and their five grandchildren. Their children include: daughter Maria McLeod and her husband Stephen Howie of Bellingham, Washington; son Joseph McLeod of St. Clair, Michigan; son Robert J. McLeod and Monica Lams McLeod of Ypsilanti, Michigan, and their child, Cecilia; son Patrick and Erica Dierkens McLeod of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and their children, Isabella, Kendra, Maysie and Edmund.

Joyce also is survived by her siblings: Raymond Radatz and wife, Teresa Radatz, of Port Huron; Thomas Radatz of Memphis, Michigan; Karen (Radatz) Soltis and her husband, Anthony Soltis, of Tillsonburg, Ontario, Canada; Jim Radatz and his wife, Sue Radatz, of Livonia, Michigan.

She is preceded in death by her parents and Katheryn Irene (Biro) Ripkey, her beloved “Aunt Kay,” who joined the Radatz family when she was 14 to help care for the five children. Joyce died on her mother’s birthday, Dec. 31.

A funeral mass will be Monday January 5, 2015 at 11:00 a.m. at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, St. Clair. Prayers will begin at the funeral home Monday at 10:15 a.m. Visitation will be Sunday 2:00 to 4:00 and 6:00 to 9:00 at Young Funeral Home, China Twp. Memorials may be made to St. John’s Reverence Hospice or St. Mary’s Organ Fund.