Joyce Shields

Receptionist and house director, 1983–2000

Joyce Shields joined the University YMCA staff in 1983 and worked there for 17 years as its receptionist and as house director of the student residence on its third floor. She looked after the students who lived there, a dozen or so University of Illinois and Parkland College students at a time, and from her first year she was the name in the Y's ads for its rooms. At the front desk she also answered for the Y's non-credit classes and the vendors' tables outside its door. With Betty Earle and Rebecca Crummey she proposed the attic sale from which Dump & Run grew, and she drove her own pickup truck around town to collect donations for it. When she retired in 2000, the Y invited back "her third floor guys" for her party. She kept volunteering at the sale after she retired.