Grandmother earns Faith School degree Religion a constant in Sullivan woman’s life

SULLIVAN – Bertha Joy likes to toot her own horn. At 75, many grandmothers are ready to put their feet up, relax and enjoy their grandchildren, but Joy is no ordinary 75-year-old.

Joy, of Sullivan, is still working and still enjoys her grandchildren. She is a spring graduate of Faith School of Theology in Charleston and is all set to preach.

Church always has been a big part of Joy’s life. She was raised a Methodist and took her Sunday school learning to heart. Once, after a lesson on temperance, she came home and dumped her father’s Southern Comfort down the drain. He was aggravated, she says, but told her he understood why she emptied the whiskey bottle. But, he told her, if she touched his Southern Comfort again he would be more than aggravated.

Even with other children, Joy would give sermons in an abandoned church in what she calls “playing church.” Eventually, one of her cousins invited her to attend their Pentecostal church where she was born again. She saw a bolt of lightning with a bright blue tail and decided then and there to devote her life to Christ.

It took another preacher, Vinal Thomas in Scarborough, to give her the idea to attend Bible college, Joy said. Thomas came down off a platform where he was preaching and because he was so short, climbed up on a chair in front of her and told her she had a calling. The calling had to be put off for a while, however – Joy then was selling mobile homes and raising four children.

But prayer remained a big part of Joy’s life and with it, miracles: one son saved from cancer, another from a catastrophic helicopter explosion in Vietnam, and she from death from a ruptured appendix after church members prayed for her.

Three years ago, she decided it was time to fulfill Thomas’ prophecy and she set about attending Faith School of Theology in Charleston, moving her belongings to her daughter’s house. Much of her studies were enjoyable because the school requires ministering to communities – Joy and other students spent time traveling to Bucksport, Stonington and Deer Isle where she often sang inspirational songs.

Singing is nothing new to Joy, either. As a young woman she wanted to be a music teacher but there were no music programs in the schools, so she went to Westbrook College to get a business degree instead.

Music continued to be an important part of Joy’s life and today her home is filled with the sounds of gospel music and on Sunday mornings her taped voice is played on the Christian Ridge Church of God program on a local radio station.

Although Joy is ready to preach, she says she is not ready to have her own church, although she is not leaving out any possibility. Meanwhile, she commutes to Mount Desert Island where she is a private home health aide and sees her nursing as a chance to bring the word of God to elderly patients.