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Joyce Brooks of Alvarado, Texas passed peacefully away in her sleep after a long battle with dementia - on October 24, 2020.
Born Madeline Joyce Gommert, to loving and devoted parents Fred and Elsa Gommert, on November 5, 1934; Joyce was 85 years old at the time of her death.
Born and raised in Bartlett, Texas. Joyce was educated in the Bartlett Public Schools where she graduated from High School in 1952. She later graduated from the Brackenridge School of Nursing in Austin, Texas in 1955 where she received her license as a Registered Nurse. It was also during this time that Joyce met her husband Allan Brooks who was studying to be a Registered Pharmacist at the University of Texas in Austin. They married in 1957.
In 1961, when her husband Allan moved the family to Bremond, Texas to start his first pharmacy, Joyce sidelined nursing and became a full-time Mom (somewhat), while also preforming bookkeeping tasks at Allan's pharmacy, and managing the local Flower Shop (her labor of love).
But in 1971 the Bremond Flower Shop was "in the rearview mirror" as Joyce and her husband Allan moved the family to Alvarado, Texas where Allan was to take on the new opportunity of running a start-up pharmacy: Community Cut-Rate Drug. Not one to be a stay-at-home Mom, Joyce was offered a position at Alvarado State Bank and worked her way up to Vice President of Teller Operations. But it wasn't until the bank decided to establish a travel group for its Senior Citizen account holders with Joyce as the Director that a spark would ignite a new passion in her life.
In her years with the travel group, Joyce and her fellow travelers explored every imaginable site-worth-seeing in the continental United States; and then, took cruises and overseas flights to many foreign destinations as well. Even after retiring from the bank, Joyce continued to feed her love for travel by coordinating trips - with a local travel agency - that she and her globetrotting friends could enjoy.
Her farewell effort to heading-up travel escapades was when the First United Methodist Church of Alvarado established a small social group called the "Get-n-Go's" where Joyce would plan for local celebrity guest lectures or entertainment and day trip adventures.
All told, Joyce lived an extraordinary life and was surrounded by people who adored her. Joyce is preceded in death by her husband Allan and her daughter Patricia; and survived by her two sons, Mike and Tod Brooks.