Mary Joy McNulty of the Lobster Pot restaurant, a mainstay of Provincetown’s cultural, social, and economic life, died peacefully on Feb. 4, 2025 at Disney World, her favorite place, surrounded by her family. The cause was complications of the flu. She was 86.

The daughter of Sydney Liss and Clare (Rabinowitz) Liss, Joy was born on April 3, 1938 in Elkins Park, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb where she grew up in a Jewish family. According to her son Tim, when she was young, Joy “was a hellion — she liked to party.”

She went to Keuka College in the Finger Lakes region of New York to study business. There she met John McNulty, who worked as a prison guard for the New York State Department of Corrections. Joy left college, they married, and from 1960 to 1972, she joined John working as a corrections officer and in the kitchen at Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Westchester County. During those years, she had four children.

The work was challenging, John and Joy were drinking too much, and their marriage failed. In 1972, at 34 and recently divorced, Joy and her friend Jean “Spanky” Siar moved their combined seven children to Provincetown with hopes for a new life. Tim said that they pulled into town on March 28, 1972, and Joy’s first job was as a waitress at the Bonnie Doone.

Joy was worried about how she would care for her children, said her son Shawn. She was still drinking when, one night at the Crown & Anchor, Staniford Sorrentino suggested that she run the restaurant there, J’s Port of Call. She accepted the offer and in 1976 changed its name to Clambake at the Crown, which she ran until 1982. She stopped drinking and stayed sober, helping others to do the same.

Established as a restaurateur and encouraged by her friend Pat Shultz, who lent her the money for the down payment, Joy bought the Lobster Pot restaurant in 1979. “It was just me and the four kids,” she told the Cape Cod Times in 2015. “I decided I couldn’t afford to rent forever, so it was a no-brainer.”

Joy ran both the Clambake and the Lobster Pot seasonally for a few years, adding a 16-unit motel and rock-and-roll club called Oxen Yoke in North Conway, N.H. to her portfolio. From 1982 to 1986, she ran the Oxen Yoke in the off-season and the Lobster Pot in the summer. Under Joy’s management in later years, the family also operated the Lobster Pot Express at Fisherman’s Wharf and the East End Cafe.

The Lobster Pot was Joy’s family business for more than 40 years. The building is a beloved Provincetown image, the subject of countless paintings, and has been a popular destination for tourists from all over the world. It has been the site of countless town events and fundraisers, something Joy welcomed in gratitude for the town’s supporting her through hard times, including the aftermath of a 1982 arson fire that nearly destroyed the restaurant.

“It’s about community,” Tim told The Cape Cod Times. For Joy, community was grounded in her family. “My mother was willing to go anywhere and go to any lengths to take care of her kids,” Tim said. “She went to all my hockey games, and if I needed new skates, she got them somehow.”

In Building Provincetown, David W. Dunlap noted how oppressive the volume of business could become, but he wrote, “The McNultys make the Lobster Pot feel happily informal, converting chaos into kinetic energy,” even while serving more than 1,000 dinners a day in season in recent years.

The Lobster Pot under Joy’s ownership has served over a million guests, and she was there to greet many of them with a smile as recognizable as the neon sign above the door. “If you treat people like family,” she said to Shawn, “they are going to respect you.” Tim said the Lobster Pot is the second largest employer in Provincetown (the town itself is first), with 104 workers in season, many of them Jamaican.

Joy was one of the first on the Cape to commit to the H-2B visa program, bringing in workers from Jamaica after Hurricane Gilbert wrecked the economy of the island in 1988.

Cassie Anderson, one of the Lobster Pot’s long-term Jamaican employees, said, “Joy adopted all of us; she was a voice for us.” Once, Anderson said, a group of teenagers came in and when they saw the menu got up to leave because they couldn’t afford the prices. Joy stopped them, sent them back in, and instructed the staff to give them whatever they would like, on the house.

“She didn’t forget the waitstaff,” Anderson said. Joy pitched in a tip of 20 percent of what the bill would have been.

Joy’s gift for hospitality was infectious; she passed it down to her children. As Beata Cook put it in the Provincetown Banner in 2020: “Joy was always a very hard worker who wanted to give her kids a sense of security before she departed this Earth. They, in turn, inherited her strong work ethic.”

Joy was a founding member of Lilly O Productions and treasurer of the Provincetown Rep Theater and the Provincetown American Playwright Awards (PAPA), which led to the eventual purchase of the current location of the Provincetown Theater. She served as a corporator at Seamen’s Bank and on the Provincetown Business Guild; she volunteered her time at Swim for Life and other local events.

She also served as treasurer of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, chair and member of the zoning board of appeals, Blessing of the Fleet Committee member, chair and founder of the Provincetown Roundup, an annual event to support those in recovery from addiction, and treasurer of Helping Our Women, for which she received the Betty Villari Community Service Award in 2020.

The late Ann McGuire once remarked, “Joy is like the rescue squad. When there is an emergency, she is the first responder.”

“My mother,” Tim said, “was a five-foot two-inch giant.”

Joy is survived by her partner, Susanne Schlegel of Fort Myers, Fla. and their dog, Winnie; her brother, Larry Liss, and wife Pam of Wayne, Pa.; nephew David Liss, wife Dede, and great-nephew Trevor of Randolph, N.J.; daughter Julie Nichols of Provincetown; sons John McNulty of Truro, Tim McNulty and partner Ana of Truro, and Shawn McNulty and partner Laura of Truro; and grandchildren Nicole, Kevin, Sam and fiancée Michela, and Kirby and partner Vanessa.

The family is planning a private memorial service and thanks everyone for the outpouring of support they have received.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Joy’s memory can be made to Helping Our Women at helpingourwomen.org.