Joyce Radke loved the theater, her church and family. She was known for her energy and laughter. She was a force, a woman who made her mark.
“She was a matriarch of Everett theater,” said Bob Henry, a retired Everett High School drama teacher. “She had a great passion for community theater.”
In the late 1950s, the Everett woman was a founding member of Snohomish County Community Theater, a group that made its home at a theater in Marysville.
Radke was an actor, director and producer. She was later a key member of the Everett Theatre Society, which saved and refurbished the downtown Historic Everett Theatre.
“She had that spunk,” said Susan Prescott, the oldest of Radke’s children. “She defied some of the limitations on women of her era.”
Joyce Eunice Radke died Dec. 9 after a short illness. She was 85.
She is survived by her three children, Susan Prescott, Steven Radke and Sara Agassiz; by grandchildren Jennifer Skov, Ryan Prescott, Joseph Radke, Kelle Agassiz and Daniel Radke; and by great-grandson Gavin Prescott.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Dr. Albert Radke, daughter, Shelley Radke, brother, Roger Champagne, and grandson, Kyle Prescott.
Born Dec. 17, 1924, in Marinette, Wis., she attended nursing school in Milwaukee. There she met Albert Radke, who was completing his internal medicine residency. They were married on Christmas Eve 1945.
After a year’s service to the Navy and her husband’s Army duty in Italy after World War II, the couple lived in Milwaukee. With baby Susan, they moved to Everett in 1950. While her husband established his medical practice, she focused on her children, her community and her church, Everett’s Trinity Lutheran.
“She was just a woman of faith,” said the Rev. Lee Kluth, a former pastor at the church. “She related to people of all ages. Joyce really saw that life was a gift of God, and each of us has the capacity to use that gift.”
Radke suffered the terrible loss of a child when her daughter, Shelley, died of leukemia in her 20s.
Longtime friend Dorthey Thompson recalled Radke being with Shelley continually during her treatment at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. After her daughter died, Radke “had a very difficult time. She thought she would never laugh again,” Thompson said.
Radke worked as a nurse at what’s now Providence Regional Medical Center. She sold real estate and traveled to Europe, Africa and Asia. She remained a faithful friend and tireless volunteer at Trinity Lutheran. “She was busy all the time,” Thompson said. “We worked on so many committees. She loved her church.”
Thompson said her friend enjoyed a second home on Lopez Island and gambling at the Tulalip Casino. “She called them her ‘three Cs,’ the church, the casino and the cabin,” Thompson said.
Radke was a lifelong learner. In her mid-40s, she returned to school, first to Everett Community College and then to the University of Washington where she earned a bachelor of arts degree with majors in theater and psychology.
Radke was a member of the UW Alumni Association. She devoted time to the Lowell Elementary PTA, Campfire Girls, the Evergreen Town Club, the Snohomish County Museum Association, United Way and the Everett Senior Center.
Prescott said that during her girlhood in the 1960s, her mother’s independence showed her what women could accomplish. “She provided us with a chance to go for our dreams,” she said.
Prescott remembers her mother taking her four children on a cross-country driving trip in 1964. They went to New York and Washington, D.C., where they visited Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, an Everett native, in his Senate office.
“She had such energy and such focus. Her laughter was her trademark,” said Henry, who worked on many theater productions with Radke. “I always knew when she was in the audience by her laugh. This laugh was raucous. It was strong. Nobody had a laugh like that. And she always spoke her mind.”
“My mom was really a lot of fun,” said Sara Agassiz, Radke’s youngest child. “She was a big Mariners fan. I wasn’t, until I realized how much fun she was having.” Agassiz would call her mother if she was watching a ballgame and saw a home run. “She’d pick up her phone and just say, ‘Goodbye, baseball,’ ” she said.
Everett’s Gary Hatle knew Radke through Trinity Lutheran Church and local theater. “She could be brassy and outspoken. She had a big heart,” he said.
Kluth, Trinity’s former pastor, said that if Radke was in the audience at a church concert she would always say, “Bravo!”
“Last Sunday, we had our annual Advent choir presentation. And somebody said, ‘Bravo.’ Joyce’s presence was felt, and will be felt, by many people who knew and loved her,” he said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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