Eleanor Joan "Cricket" Griffith died March 27 at the age of 91 with her children at her side. She was born on 10/24/20 in Weymouth, England, to Dorothy Elizabeth Simnet and Reginald Victor Dovey-Allen. Her father died when she was a baby from wounds he suffered in WW I. Dorothy married Albert Boyce when Joan was 5 and Joan always considered Albert Boyce her father and not her step-dad.
Joan grew up in Plymouth, England where she also attended St. Andrews Episcopal School and Notre Dame High School. She was passionately interested in dance and music, and when polio ended her dream of being a dancer, she became an excellent swimmer as a result of Albert's regimen for strengthening her legs. Albert was often deployed with the Royal Navy so Joan and her sibs completed scrapbooks of their activities during his absences and this was a habit she never lost.
As a young adult she attended nursing school and her sister remembers her coming home to
report on her nursing experiences in graphic detail. At the beginning of the war, Joan decided to use her nurse's training for her national service and worked for the Red Cross at the Royal East Sussex Hospital in Hastings, England. The family home was destroyed during the Plymouth Blitz of 1941 and that same year, Joan moved to London where she attended school to be able to work in radio communications. In 1941 she was billeted in Machrihanish, Argyll, Scotland, and then transferred to Cable and Wireless in London. Her mother died in 1943.
She met her long-time friend Regan at Cable and Wireless and they worked the night shift, after having to get special permission to be the only women on that shift. Joan supervised and operated high-speed radio transmissions and receipts on the Burma, Johannesburg, and New York circuits, and sometimes communicated with the French resistance as she spoke some French. Joan and Regan would go to the theater several times a week on their way to work, despite the air raids. She was never able to see "Gone with the Wind" in its entirety in England due to interruptions caused by air raids. She was present in London for VE Day and never forgot her Morse code.
During the war she met "my soldier", Glen Griffith, who was stationed in the south of England
with the 9th Army Air Force. She often commented that during their courtship, he always brought her violets and never polished his boots. In 1946 Joan immigrated to the US and married Glen in St. Louis, Mo., in August of that year. They remained married until his death in 2010.
Joan was disappointed to find that she would not be able to work in communications/radio in the US as "there are no jobs for women in that field" but did work with the American Red Cross in Iowa and Missouri, and welcomed her first child, Libby, in 1947. As Glen had always wanted to go into wildlife management, the family moved to Chico, Calif., in 1949 so Glen could attend Chico State University, and then moved to Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif., in 1950. Brian was added to the family in 1950 and in 1951 Joan became a US citizen. While the family lived in married student housing at Humboldt State, Joan organized a babysitting co-operative for the young families living there.
In 1953 Glen graduated and the family moved to Lovelock so Glen could work for Nevada Fish and Game Commission as it set up its new system of district offices. Greg was added to the family in 1954. Joan had to adjust to the small rural community and Glen's absences for work, but she soon established herself in the Lovelock community. She was a member of the American Library Association in Lovelock from 1955-1969. She was chairman of the State Library Board from 1961-1962. Joan was a Girl Guide in England; since there was no Girl Scout troop in Lovelock, she and her friend Dorotha Itza organized one. She was active in the local PTA and sang in the choir of Lovelock Methodist Church.
Joan always attended her children's activities and completed several different knitting projects while watching her sons' Little League baseball games. She was given her nickname "Cricket" by Mary Starr during training for a mother-son baseball game, and maintained this nickname all her life. Despite concerns about polio and its communicability, Joan regularly took her children swimming, but when the oral polio vaccine became available she helped organize the first community vaccine clinic in the state, which saw the population of Lovelock grow by several hundred people. While in Lovelock, she became affiliated with Beta Sigma Phi, an affiliation she continued throughout the rest of her life.
In 1969 the family relocated to Reno so Glen could accept administrative positions with Fish
and Game, and Joan began working for Kelly Girl. Her job assignments were always interesting
to her and she worked briefly for Bill Raggio. She was offered a permanent position in the
office of Dr. Donald Day and his partners in 1975 and remained with the practice in its various configurations until 2009 when she retired at age 88. Throughout her residence in Reno, Joan indulged her wanderlust by visiting almost every continent, visiting with her family in England, and completing a scrapbook after each trip. She loved traveling, her vegetable and rose gardens, cooking, needlework, the performing arts, having the family together for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, the family dogs, and her backyard pond where she would bird-watch for hours.
Joan is survived by her children Libby of Sparks, Greg (Brenda) of Red Rock; Brian (Nicole) of Las Vegas; her (half)sister Rosemary (Jack) Heath of Edgeware, England; nieces Anne (Terry) Peppitt of Knaresborough, England; Susan (Terry) McGill of Princes Risborough, England; Patty (Barry) Clayton of London, England; and nephew Bernard Whiten. She is predeceased by her husband Glen, her mother Dorothy Elizabeth Boyce, father Reginald Victor Allen, stepfather Albert Boyce, her Auntie Ellie (Elinore Cochrane), half-sister Barbara (Tony) Whiten, and numerous pets and grand-pets.
Although she was a committed American-by-choice and loved her adopted country, she was
always British at her core. Her Scots heritage - MacDonald of Clanranald - was a source of
great pride to her (she was bemused to learn that Glen's family included Campbells). She will
be going home to the British Isles and to be interred in Old Ayr Cemetery in Ayr, Scotland where her mother is also buried.
Cremation services were provided by Ross, Burke and Knobel, which will also host a memorial service to be held at a later date. That memorial will be announced in this paper. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to your local library, the Nature Conservancy, the American Red Cross, Girl Scouts of America or a local arts programs (Nevada Opera, the Philharmonic or a school of dance.)
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