Joy Windsor Schultz

Joy Windsor (Fidler) Schultz passed away peacefully on Monday May 5, 2025 at Carbondale Memorial Hospital.

Joy was born October 26, 1941 in Brockton, Massachusetts to Lawrence and Helen (Edwards) Fidler, and grew up in West Bridgewater, southwest of Boston. After becoming a nurse in the early sixties, she made a course change and began studying English in New Hampshire, eventually earning a master’s degree at Southern Illinois University after relocating to Carbondale with her husband, Dr. (John) Howard Schultz. The couple had two sons, Jeffrey Howard and Lawrence Mason. She was preceded in death by her parents, sister Ruth Abrams of Holbrook, MA, and husband Howard and both of her sons (Larry in 1999 and Jeff in 2017).

After coming to SIU, the Schultz family lived a life of modest comfort and intellectual curiosity, until Howard’s tragic death in 1978 brought irrevocable changes to their lives. Joy persevered, and did everything she knew to do to take care of their young boys, moving into a career as a legal clerk to Judge Charles Jones at the Illinois Appellate Court. On his retirement, she went on to work for Judge Moses Harrison, also on the Illinois Appellate Court until being elected to the Illinois Supreme Court, where she followed him.

In her retirement, Joy gained her greatest satisfaction, apart from the professional accomplishments of her then surviving son Jeff, (also an accomplished lawyer), through caring for animals. Besides her own menagerie at home (usually one dog and a variety of cats, many requiring special care), she volunteered for local shelters, driving as many animals as would fit into the back of her Jeep across the length of the state of Illinois, and well beyond, in order to place them in loving adoptive homes. She was keenly interested in politics, as well as history, language, and of course the law, and enjoyed involved discussions of all these topics and more. She also enjoyed travel, including vacation/reunions with members of her graduating class of 1962, New England Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing (see graduation photo above). She traveled further afield with her small group of lifelong friends from high school, making trips to continental Europe as well as Ireland and her father’s native England. She put a high value on these trips and would likely have spent her life traveling as often as she could (always a challenge for pet owners), however around this time she realized what she had always been told was asthma was actually a rare genetic lung disorder (alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency). Her breathing difficulties were becoming worse, and her diagnosis was brought about by basically insisting that she get the indicated tests for it, despite being advised against it due to its rarity. Without the weekly treatments she received after her diagnosis, she would have likely lived a shorter life, much like her grandfather did from symptoms that greatly resembled the then unidentified disease.

No matter what difficulties came her way, Joy was a survivor. Of course being a survivor doesn’t mean living forever, but it means finding a way to live through things you couldn’t imagine ever having to live through. She had to do that more than most, but now she can rest.

A celebration of life will be held at Meredith Funeral Home in Carbondale on Saturday, June 21, 2025 at 5:00PM. A visitation will take place on Saturday from 4:00PM until the time of service at the funeral home.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to St. Francis Animal Shelter in Murphysboro.

Meredith Funeral Home in Carbondale is assisting the family with arrangements. To leave a story or memory of Joy, visit www.meredithfh.com.