Joy May local music shop owner dies
Joy Ritson May, a previous owner of May's Music Shoppe and one of the founders of the Musical Theatre Guild of Butler, died Thursday at the Good Samaritan Hospice at Concordia. She was 83 years old.
Joy May co-owned the music shop with her husband, the late Richard “Dick” May, and the two were part of the group of founders for the MTG, even hosting the early meetings in their living room in the 1960s.
The music shop, now owned by her son, Joshua, has been in the family for 90 years, he said.
According to him, music wasn't just her passion.
“Music was her life,” he said. “She was literally (in the store) working in some capacity until the day her health started to decline, up until about two weeks ago. Six days a week.”
And she really knew her music, said Robin Kriley, the secretary of the MTG.
“She was very knowledgeable about every thing in that shop,” Kriley said. “If I went in there and said, 'I need a piece of music for this special occasion,' she knew immediately. She knew that store like the back of her hand. She knew the music, she knew the people who came there.”
In 1963, Joy and Dick hosted the first MTG meeting, although Joy has previously given founding credit to Carl Gnade and the late Bill Lehnerd.
“The very first MTG meeting was in my mom and dad's living room at their house on Monroe Street. I wasn't even born,” Joshua May said.
“She was always a big supporter of the Guild,” Kriley said. “She and her husband, Dick, were always involved. They would always help with any musical items we needed, any instrumentation ... She was just a delightful woman.”
In addition to owning the store and helping with the MTG, Joy May was a singer and piano player.
“She was a piano player for her entire life, but she hadn't played in years because of her age and her arthritis,” Joshua May said.
She was a choir director at Nixon United Methodist Church in Penn Township, played hand bells for the First United Methodist Church in Butler and was a member of the Christian singing group Acts, according to Joshua May.
“I never have known a more caring woman,” Joshua May said. “The amount of love she had for everybody was just overwhelming. Just a great woman ... She's going to be sorely, sorely missed in the music community.”
