Joyce Stein — a small town girl who enjoyed a huge taste of the big city

Joyce (Lentz) Stein, in Washington, D.C., in 1945.

Joyce Lentz was born in 1926, raised in Manchester and graduated with the MHS class of 1945. While the world was still at war, she and most of her classmates wondered what the future would hold. Everyone, of course, wanted to be helpful to the war effort. What would that look like for the female graduates of 1945? Would it be college? Or a job? Or even signing up for a service-related career?

“Some of our male classmates had been drafted; others had already joined up for the service,” she told me a few years ago for an article in M Magazine. “Everyone felt the need to be patriotic and useful in their own way to bring an end to the war.”

When a post card arrived in the mail looking for high school graduates to fill secretarial positions in Washington D.C., it looked enticing to Joyce and her friend Doris Schwab (later Bersuder).

“You just had to take a civil service exam; pass it; get your transportation paid (by train); lodging would be provided; and you could start your job in two days!” Joyce said.

So Joyce and Doris both left Manchester in August of 1945, just as the war was ended and obtained jobs as clerk-typists in the Pentagon building. They lived in a boarding house on Massachusetts Ave., not far from DuPont Circle.

“Our parents were not keen on the idea,” she recalled. “(It was) a co-ed boarding house and we arrived in Washington just two days before V-J Day. So we were there when all the celebrations were taking place in Washington … we were up all night … and it was really something to witness.”

It was an exhilarating time for a couple of small-town girls. They were doing important work and could experience some excitement that they’d never have found at home, at the same time. It would have been easy, Joyce told me, to meet and fall for a serviceman during their time in Washington. Many of their friends did, but Doris came home to Manchester after a year and was married, while Joyce stayed on for two years before returning home. She received a commendation from the U.S. Civil Service Commission and a letter from President Truman thanking her for her service to the U.S. Government.

Having had a taste of city life, however, Joyce found herself “kind of restless” in Manchester, so she went to Detroit and found a job in a bank there. And it was there that she met her first husband, William Westfall, the brother of one of her co-workers. They had three children, Carol, David, and Susan, together before he died in October, 1957.

“Mom moved back to Manchester (as a widow with three young children) in the spring of 1958,” says her daughter, Carol Westfall. “She wanted to get us kids into the Manchester schools that spring so we might possibly make some new friends going into the summer. We first rented a small house on East Main St. and later purchased a home on Territorial St.”

Joyce’s first job in Manchester was as legal secretary for formidable attorney James Hendley, who had his office on the second level of the then-Union Savings Bank (now Comerica Bank). Hendley partnered first with Peter Kensler and then James Datsko, and over her years with the firm, Joyce worked with all three attorneys, handling sensitive legal work with confidence and ease. She then worked for several years for Sue and Mark Gistinger of Gistinger & Gistinger attorneys, from where she retired.

In the mid-1960s, Joyce had remarried, to Dick Stein, and they purchased their home at 322 Ann Arbor Hill, where she lived the remainder of her life. The couple had a daughter, Kristin. Dick predeceased Joyce in 2007.

Through the years, Joyce has remained energetic and active in volunteer organizations, particularly the American Legion Auxiliary Unit #117, and St. Mary’s Parish, until just a few years before her passing last week at the age of 95. Her gracious smile, her willingness to serve, and her can-do attitude were hallmarks that will long be remembered by her family and all she encountered within her community. 

For as little as $1 a month, you can keep Manchester-focused news coverage alive.

by Marsha Chartrand

Marsha Johnson Chartrand, a founder, writer, and copy editor with the Manchester Mirror, is a 50-year resident of Manchester. She has a long history of volunteer and community involvement.