Joy Farina Downey of North Truro died peacefully at Cape Cod Hospital on Feb. 17, 2025, hours after saying goodbye to her family. The cause was heart failure. She was 81.
The daughter of Vincent and Ruth (Mansfield) Farina, Joy was born on May 9, 1943 in Quincy, where she grew up. Her father ran a cabinetry business called Farina Kitchens. Joy was a cheerleader in middle school, said her husband, Jim, but she gave that up before graduating from Braintree High School in 1961.
Joy attended Boston University for three years. Itching to travel, she left college to work briefly as a legal secretary before moving to California to work for Starkist Tuna in Long Beach.
She applied to American Airlines and Eastern Airlines to be a flight attendant and received offers from both. She chose American because of its extensive California flights and the airline’s stylish uniforms. After six weeks of training in Fort Worth, Texas, the airline changed the uniform to short skirts and go-go boots. Joy was not pleased.
She graduated from flight academy in 1967 and worked first out of Chicago and then Boston. In those years, “stewardesses” were not allowed to marry or have children; they also had strict limits on their weight. By the time Joy retired in 2001, all that had changed.
Her favorite destinations included Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, and Paris, and she enjoyed visiting Moscow, Cairo, Switzerland, Ethiopia, Italy, Greece, and the Virgin Islands.
On one trip to Cairo, where her aunt Alicia Mansfield was working for the U.S. embassy and her uncle Jack Mansfield was with peacekeeping forces in the Sinai, she had lunch with Fatima El Sharif, the exiled queen of Libya, said Jim.
Joy was drawn to the Outer Cape, and she bought a house in Truro. At a “Monte Carlo Night” fundraiser at the Provincetown Holiday Inn in the early ’80s, her sister met Jim Downey, who was a dealer at one of the card tables. She noticed he was wearing his Realtor pin and asked if he could do an appraisal for her sister.
Jim referred her to an appraiser, but Joy’s sister told her to call Jim. They soon met and dated for several years. During that time, Jim said, he prepared her tax returns for her and discovered “that she gave much of her disposable income as gifts to family members and friends.” In January 1988, they married in St. Croix.
Two days after their honeymoon, Joy had major surgery on a growth on her brain stem. American Airlines told her she could no longer work as a flight attendant. It was five years before her lawsuit to get her job back succeeded, and she was reinstated.
Joy continued to fly for 10 more years. “There’s a Jimmy Buffett song, ‘A Man Went to Paris,’ that goes, ‘Some of life was magic, some of it was tragic,’ ” Jim said. “That song says something about Joy’s indomitable spirit.”
Joy had a profound love of the ocean and the natural beauty of the Outer Cape. She cherished the view of Provincetown and Cape Cod Bay from North Truro, finding peace and joy in the ever-changing seascape. Whether watching the sunset over the water or listening to the gentle waves, the bay provided her with continuous inspiration and tranquility.
She is survived by her husband of 37 years, James T. Downey of North Truro; her sisters, Judy Marks of Hull and Karen Ash of Moultonborough, N.H.; her brothers, David Farina of Albuquerque, N.M., Vincent Farina of Plymouth, Douglas Farina of Plymouth, and Mark Farina of Braintree; her nephew Jason Vaughan of Chesapeake, Va.; her niece Allison Kierce of York, Pa.; numerous great-nieces and -nephews; and many other family members and friends, including her colleagues in the flight attendant community.
A memorial service and celebration of life will be held at Montano’s Restaurant in North Truro at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 16.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Truro Rescue Squad c/o the Truro Fire Dept. or to the American Heart Fund at heart.org.
