Obituary: Joyce Joynes Langston / Nurse, volunteer and lover of life
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Joyce Joynes Langston had a lack of inhibition and an abundance of caring -- she put the one to good use for entertaining, and the other to great effect for helping youngsters.
After a 1996 brain tumor ended her employment as a registered nurse, Ms. Langston recovered to fill a still-valuable role as a volunteer assisting Pittsburgh elementary school kids in reading and learning healthy habits to avoid obesity.
Many of those youths saw her dance as a form of trying to teach them something. Similarly, many attendees at the University of Pittsburgh's football and basketball games saw her dance in the stands as her way of supporting those teams. And Ms. Langston would be the first -- and sometimes the only -- OASIS participant to get to her feet and shake and groove enthusiastically to the music accompanying some event of the older adult volunteer group.
"She was full of life," said OASIS manager Shirley Fisher. "She was just her own individual person. She had the biggest heart of anybody I know, but she had a spirit and positive attitude about her that just transcended everything."
Ms. Langston died Thursday of lung disease at UPMC St. Margaret. The Green Tree resident was 65.
Originally from the Tidewater area of Virginia, where she received her training at the DePaul Medical Center School of Nursing, Ms. Langston moved to the Pittsburgh area in the late 1970s with her husband, Donald.
She worked at St. Clair Hospital in Mt. Lebanon, and after certification as a psychiatric nurse, took positions at Southwood Psychiatric Hospital and Lakewood Psychiatric Hospital. At those facilities and later in the city schools, she dealt regularly with tough youngsters from difficult backgrounds, but her husband said Ms. Langston had her own tough training, despite her perpetually sunny disposition.
First Published January 10, 2012 12:00 am
