Norma Joy Milner Arkfeld, after numerous previously-exaggerated rumors of her demise, went home to be with the Lord on Tuesday, August 17th, 2021.
Services will be held on Monday, August 23rd at 2 pm at Rumsey-Yost Funeral Home. A visitation will be immediately prior beginning at 1 pm. Burial will be in Eudora Cemetery, 2223 N. 1420 Rd., Eudora, Kansas, with an open house following at 1646 Massachusetts St., Lawrence, Kansas.
Joy was born the 9th of 10 children on June 28th, 1943, in Belleville, KS to Archie and Anona (née Owen) Milner, and was the only one of her siblings who graduated from high school.
Despite lacking indoor plumbing until she was seven, Joy raised three children in a comfortable middle class life (at times single-handedly) working two full-time jobs and waitressing on the weekends.
Having only completed several hours of community college, Joy would rise to head the accounting department of a regional grocery distributor, and to be the first women in the male dominated office of regional purchasing, where she insisted, by virtue of her work, to be treated equally.
In the mid-1990s, Joy reinvented herself doing door-to-door sales and eventually became co-owner of the Topeka branch of Aerus Electrolux with her loving and faithful husband, Phil Arkfeld.
Joy was insistent on charting her own coarse in every facet of life, despite and perhaps as a result of being told that she could or should not. She was inviting and inclusive and would turn over her house to accommodate any number of friends or family who might show up at her door, but did not suffer fools gladly. She coordinated brutal vacation schedules, could muster resources both meager and great to accomplish impressive things, was dauntless in her determination, and was hell on wheels. More than a few deer and turnpike arms have her name on them.
Despite a medical establishment that insisted it was all in her head, Joy, in the face of a number crippling arthritis-related diseases, rallied all her strength to wring every bit of experience and adventure from life. Just as with poverty, the male dominated office, the turn-pike arm or the unfortunate yard-worker at the local lumber yard who asked to speak to her husband, Joy would not back down.
Joy married Larry Timkar in 1961 and the two share three children, Kirsten, Sonja, and Erich. They divorced.
Joy married her husband Phil, after impressing him with her driving, on December 13th, 1997 and the two lived on their property in Berryton, KS for approximately twenty years, until Joy’s passing.
Joy is survived by her husband, Phil and her sister, Barbara Lewellyn of Belleville, KS, as well as five children, three by birth, Kirsten Moreland, Sonja Owen, and Erich Timkar, and two by marriage, Andy Arkfeld and Misty Green.
She is also survived by twelve grandchildren, six great-grand children, and Reggie-Jake and Mr Kitty.
The family suggests memorial contributions to the Arthritis Foundation, sent in care of the funeral home.
