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Clan Munro USA
Genealogy Pages
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 Abt 1896 - 1994 (~ 98 years)
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| Name |
Joyce Isabel Munro |
| Born |
Abt 1896 |
| Gender |
Female |
| Died |
Jun 1994 |
| Buried |
Tomanhurich Cem.  |
| Person ID |
I26521 |
Munro |
| Last Modified |
19 Feb 2004 |
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| Notes |
- During World War I, Joyce worked as a wire splicer with a team of young women at the Tornbush Quay. The worked with 3-inch wire jack-stays building the submarine defence her father designed to protect Cromarty Firth and Scapia Flow.
In 1918 she married in St. Andrew's Cathedral, Inverness, Captain W. F. Somervail, DSO, MC, of Hoselaw near Kelso. He was killed in action just two months after their marriage and five weeks before the end of the war.
Nearly five years later she married W. J. M. (Jock) Menzies, CBE, and moved to Edinburgh. Jock was Inspector of Salmon Fisheries of Scotland between the wars, and built up an international reputation as an expert on salmon. During the World War II, Jock served in the Ministry of Food as Principal and Assistant Secretary in Wales and London. Joyce, who was virtually a war widow and who was too old for the Forces, "dug for Victory" with great energy, supplying fresh vegetables from her garden to trawlermen.
In 1948, she separated from her husband, and moved in 1952 to Cupar, Fife, to live with her daughter and son-in-law and two grandsons. She lived in Cupar for some 30 years taking a very active interest in the SWRI, the Embroiderers' Guild and Handcraft Circle. In her youth, she had had considerable musical talent, but in later life she developed real skills in all sorts of handcrafts, most particularly in embroidery. She travelled extensively over Scotland, holding classes and judging. She maintained this interest until her death.
She created many remarkable works of art, heirlooms which now adorn the homes of her descendants. She was a keen motorist, and a very active grandmother, to whom her two grandsons owe much of their knowledge and love of the Highlands. Family holidays were always in the North, and she was delighted to return there for good when her son-in-law retired in 1983.
Joyce was a woman of character, with great strength of mind and determination. It would be idle to pretend that these qualities made her always easy to live with, but with age she mellowed and in great age she displayed her usual common-sense and positive qualities when periods of illness and general infirmity made it necessary for her to enter a Nursing Home in Ullapool. She adapted to her new routine, greatly enjoyed the company of the staff, and continued to enjoy life and look to the future. She remained thus to the last, alert and mentally active, reading widely, knitting and producing exquisite embroidery. She maintained a regular correspondence, writing in a consistently elegant hand.
She inherited from her father a great love of family, and of her Clan. She represented the Association in the radio quiz series called "Clan Clash", was elected to council in 1951, and became Vice President in 1978. For many years she travelled devotedly to meetings, once coming close to losing her life in blizzards on the way home. Her contributions to meetings were often forthright, reminding those who remembered him, of her father. Increasing deafness made it difficult for her towards the end of her life to take an active part, but the activities of Clan Munro (Association) remained important to her, and provided her with two of the great moments of her life. The first was when she made the presentation, on behalf of CMA, of gifts to mark the coming-of-age of Hector (now the Chief), and the second in 1987 when she planted a tree at Foulis to mark the 50th anniversary of the Founding of the Association.
Her funeral service took place in the Cathedral in Inverness, where she was first married. Floral Tributes included a wreath from the Council of which she had been a member for 43 years, and she lies beside her infant brother, Halcro Donald Hector Munro, in Tomanhurich Cemetery, in the heart of the Highlands she so much loved.
Ref: "Clan Munro Magazine" - No. 21 - p. 40-41
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