Joy Edith Osborn was a “Woman on the Go,” according to a decades-old newspaper article that featured her for her many and varied community activities in Wheaton.
“Been carrying it with me for 35 years,” her daughter, Gwendolyn “Wendy” Osborn, of Madison, Wis., said of the faded news clipping from April 13, 1969.
“In addition to women’s clubs and night courses, mom was also involved with her church, Gary Methodist Church, the Central DuPage Hospital Auxiliary and the Chicago Rehabilitation Institute,” said her daughter.
“A major turning point for mom, when she was 30 years old, in 1957. … Right after I was born, she had her leg amputated because of bone cancer,” said her daughter.
“After all sorts of emotional upset she landed at the Chicago Rehabilitation Institute and learned how to use her prosthesis. From there, because she had been through so much, the institute asked her to take part in helping people who were having a particularly tough time dealing with their disabilities,” she said.
Mrs. Osborn, 78, died Saturday, Dec. 3, in the Holmstad’s Michealsen Health Center in Batavia. A longtime resident of Wheaton, she moved to Holmstad in 1991 after the 1990 death of her husband, L. Earl Osborn.
Mrs. Osborn was born in Cincinnati and moved with her mother and grandmother, who raised her, to Winnetka when she was about 12. She graduated from New Trier High School, according to her daughter.
Mrs. Osborn met her husband when he and her late mother, Louise Brunn worked together at a department store in Freeport, Ill.
Her husband’s career as a naval officer during World War II and the Korean War resulted in an extended series of moves for the couple, ending in Wheaton in the mid-1950s, when he worked for Sears, Roebuck & Co. and later as a manufacturer’s representative and owner of furniture shops in DuPage County.
The move to Wheaton was Mrs. Osborn’s 18th in 17 years, the Wheaton Journal article quotes her as saying.
“A woman on the go–that was the headline,” said her daughter, reading from the article.
In it, according to her daughter, Mrs. Osborn said that “one of the problems of our transient society is nobody lives anywhere long enough to get involved.” Mrs. Osborn suggested that women “act as if you are going to stay and choose one or two projects to work on.”
Mrs. Osborn also worked with Family Services in DuPage and was publicity chairman for the Wheaton Council on Drug Abuse, according to her daughter.
Despite suffering a stroke soon after moving to Holmstad, Mrs. Osborn remained active in the community.
“Every possible activity they had going, Mom was there–the exercise, the bingo, the church, everything. Mom was busy. She did everything she could get into,” said her daughter. “She was a prolific correspondent. She wrote to everybody.”
Mrs. Osborn is also survived by sons Chris and Kevin; a sister, Anne Brunn; brothers Bill and Bob Brunn; and two grandchildren.
Services will be held at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in Michaelsen Health Center Chapel, 831 N. Batavia Ave., in Batavia.
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