Former First Lady Joyce Hoyte is to be buried on Friday, according to information from family friend Dr. Faith Harding.
She told this newspaper yesterday that the funeral service will be held at the Lykens Funeral Home and that there were plans to hold a “reflection afternoon” the same day but permission was still being sought to hold the event along the Merriman’s Mall, opposite Hoyte’s North Road, Bourda home.
Other details will be made public once they are finalised, she added.
Dr. Harding said Hoyte had been like an older sister to her and she was very sad at her passing. “I didn’t expect it because the last time we spoke she was to get blood and I was hopeful,” she stated.
Hoyte had been hospitalised for several days before she died at the age of 77. Dr. Harding continued that Hoyte had been a “very private person” who had experienced deep tragedy with the death of her children and sister in 1985 and she believed that the former First Lady had been feeling “a bit lonely over the last three years.”
Her husband, former president Hugh Desmond Hoyte, died in 2002.
Dr. Harding noted that she and Mrs. Hoyte had worked with several children’s organisations over the years and took great joy from the experience.
“She quietly served the poor and needy women in our country,” she said, while adding that she always appreciated the honour and respect bestowed on her by several women’s organisations.
Dr. Harding also noted Hoyte’s wealth of knowledge—an attribute much remarked upon by other commentators. “She was stoic and had this keen sense of politics.
She had newspapers from the 1960s and was a library in her own right. She thought you never knew when something would be needed and she helped her husband and she helped me,” she remarked.
According to Dr Harding, despite being a private person, Hoyte was always willing to share the information she had at her disposal.
Hoyte died on Monday at the St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, after some three weeks of hospitalisation for an undetermined ailment.
