Staff report
news@wbcowqel.com
She was known for bringing “Joy in the Morning” to local residents for years and now Crawford County’s Joy is gone. WBCO/WQEL’s own Joy Tarbert passed away on Mother’s Day at Altercare of Bucyrus.
The Zanesville native who moved to the area in 1969 and to Bucyrus in 1973 was simply known as Joy to her friends and listeners. She was known for her broadcasting on both radio and TV. Her TV show was Joy in the Morning and Joy was on the air with her morning program, Just Between Friends, until her microphone was silenced by a stroke in 2007.
Her contributions to the community and to others went well beyond her career in broadcasting, however.
For most of her adult life Joy was an advocate for the mentally disabled. She was the founder and director for 18 years of the Special Kids Kamp and a member of the Founding Committee for the Ohio Special Olympics.
She was inducted into the Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame in 2008 and in 2007 she was named the Citizen of the Year by the Bucyrus Area Chamber of Commerce. Joy’s husband Bill died in 1997 and she is survived by three children – Penny, Steve and Mike – and three grandchildren.
Calling hours are Wednesday at Wise Funeral Home with services there on Thursday morning. A complete obituary can be found on this site’s Obituary page.