Biography: Joy Broach, the last of the red hot Cox sisters from Dumas and a lifelong learner whose watchword was “Life’s uncertain. Eat dessert first,” died Jan. 13 in Berkeley, Calif. She was 89.
 
A gregarious teacher, successful retail manager and vivacious community volunteer over six decades of living in Little Rock, she epitomized her given name. Friends found her energetic, outgoing, optimistic, uplifting, encouraging, considerate and solicitous. And she never missed a chance to sip Champagne or eat ice cream.
 
Joy was a hoot. Once she gave her close friend Harold Hedges a pot-bellied pig for his birthday, and another time she sent her oldest son’s high school friend to Hedges' house posing as a delivery man. When Hedges signed for the package, the faux delivery driver smashed a whipped cream pie in his face and fled.
 
Born in Dumas (Desha County) during the Great Depression, Joy was the youngest of three daughters of Thomas James Cox, a grocer, and his wife, Mamie Fish Tucker Cox.  At Dumas High School, on College Street back then, she played in the band and was a cheerleader. The family lived just across College, but she insisted on driving her father’s Jeep to campus.
 
She was selected for Girls State, which in turn elected her one of two Arkansas delegates to Girls Nation in 1952. She also joined the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls, and eventually rose to grand worthy advisor, the top position in the order’s Arkansas Grand Assembly, in 1955-56.
 
It was at Dumas High that a teacher inspired her to study speech. She did so, first at William Woods College in Fulton, Missouri, then at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where she obtained her bachelor’s degree and was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. 
 
At Fayetteville, she met Henry Broach Jr. of Bucksnort (Dallas County). They married soon after he graduated, just before he entered service as an Air Force officer in Texas. They lived in McAllen, where she taught children with disabilities, San Antonio and then Enid, Oklahoma, They settled in Little Rock in 1960 and joined St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, where Joy later was one of the first two women elected to the vestry, the parish’s governing board.
 
Once their three sons were in school, she sought to enroll at Little Rock University, now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, for further studies. While standing in line to register for classes, she met the chair of the speech and drama department, Cliff Haislip, who hired her on the spot to teach speech. Later, when two of her sons entered First Lutheran School, now Christ Little Rock School, she designed and taught a public speaking course for fifth and sixth graders. Friends of her sons would compliment her by using a term from a subculture of the day, saying, “Your mom is a trip.”
 
For several years, Joy managed the Orvis Shop in Little Rock, a hiking, camping and fishing store that she and her husband co-owned with Hedges and his wife, Merry Helen. There she learned fly fishing and fly tying. The store made a profit in its first year of operation.
 
She was trained and certified as a master gardener, often tending to Mount Holly Cemetery. When her husband bought and restored a vintage airplane, she took flying lessons in case she ever needed to land it while on a trip with him. She also was a member of the Aesthetics Club. Once her sons were grown and moved out, she learned to play harp.
 
Joy campaigned for U.S. Rep. David Pryor against U.S. Sen. John McClellan in 1972. She and her husband were early and longtime supporters of the campaigns of Bill Clinton, beginning with the Arkansas attorney general race of 1976. In 2004, they were among the first volunteers at the newly opened Clinton Presidential Center. She went on to log the second-most service hours at the center. The couple also served at several Clinton Global Initiative conferences in New York, Texas, Florida and California. When receiving an award from the former president at a ceremony for volunteers, she quipped to him, “I would have done it even if I had been paid.”
 
Joy Broach is survived by her three sons, Drew Broach (Robin Peters) of Jefferson, Louisiana, Whitney Broach of Denver, Colorado, and Desten Broach (Franci Kursh) of Piedmont, California; and three grandchildren: Ezra Warwick (Ryan Warwick) of Baltimore and Felix Broach and Sara Broach of Piedmont. Joy’s husband died in 2021.
 
Joy’s funeral is scheduled Feb. 1 at Christ Church, 509 Scott St. in Little Rock. Visitation begins at 10 a.m., the service at 11 a.m., followed by burial at Mount Holly Cemetery. “At least this time of year, it isn’t so stinkin’ hot,” Joy would say.
 
In lieu of flowers, her children ask consideration of the Broach Family Endowment, in care of the Arkansas Community Foundation, Suite 51110, 5 Allied Drive, Little Rock, Arkansas 72202, or online via http://www.arcf.org/broach. Arrangements are under the direction of RuebelFuneralHome.com