2/2 interview

2/2
The person I interviewed was Joy Lynn Conwell. She is a librarian at the IWC library. The reason I interviewed her was because she has been a resident of Mount Pleasant almost her whole entire life. Our first interview was kind of random hitting many different topics.
We started off my interview with talking about her religion. Joy is a Mormon and she has been one since 1974. She then went to talk about how she had married her husband in Utah because they wanted to be married in a Temple of their religious faith. Their wedding in Utah was held in the Logan temple, and the reception was held at the Blue Bird restaurant. Joy proceeded to tell me that the Utah reception was just a small one for her husband’s family and that the real reception was held back in Iowa where Joy was from. Joy also mentioned that her husband had proposed to her on Valentine’s Day.
After that Joy started talking about how she attended four different colleges and other schools. After college she did many things like have lunch at the White House with Ronald Reagan the day Prince Charles and Princess Diana got married. She went on to say that she also had barbeque with the King of Sweden.
Joy was born in 1952. Her parents got divorced in 1964 when she was eleven years old. After that Joy mentioned that she and her husband were the family historians. After that Joy started talking about her family a bit. Her dad was a hired hand which is why they lived in several different farms as a small child. There were nine children total in her family. She has a younger brother, three older sisters, and there were four children that died in between herself and her brother. Her parents never remarried after their divorce, and Joy knows they loved each other till they died. Joy and her siblings were the poor kids in town since having a single mom was extremely rare. So their childhood was hard, but as a child she never felt like she was poor. After the divorce Joy’s mother had to learn how to drive and handle money. But Joy’s mom was a very determined lady, she went to school while she worked and was a mom. And she ended up graduating college at the same time Joy graduated from high school in 1970.
Other things Joy mentioned was that her father had schizophrenia which caused her parents to divorce. Her mother later on in life got cancer and Parkinson’s disease, and her brother has cerebral palsy. Because of her brother’s medical problems, Joy’s mother moved to California and then to Arizona so that Joy’s brother could get educated. Another thing Joy mentioned was that her mom was a nurse, a nurse in neo natal, for children with cleft pallets. Joy’s mother not only was one of very few single moms (only one in Mediapolis or surrounding areas), but she was also the first single parent allowed to be a foster parent for the state of Iowa. So not only did Joy have eight siblings, she also had 41 foster siblings.
Another thing Joy talked about was her religious beliefs. Joy is a Mormon, and they are called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Her husband is the president or “lay minister” of their local congregation. Joy was originally Presbyterian, but she converted at age twenty-one. Joy also explained a little bit about how her church works, like; how their churches must be four-hundred people or less and how she is considered a “pastor’s wife.”
Joy graduated from high school in Mediapolis, Iowa. Her husband was from Kansas City, and after her wedding she and her husband moved to Mount Pleasant. And another thing Joy mentioned was that her grandfather was one of the first pilots for WWI, and she has his uniform and helmet.