June 4, 2020
By KEITH RYAN CARTWRIGHT
Rutherford County Schools
Kindhearted, caring, warm, inviting, understanding, genuine, empathetic, respectful, hardworking, organized, efficient, knowledgeable, valuable and, as a true testament to her character, modest.
Those are just a sampling of adjectives used to describe Joyce Michaels.
In short, the longtime executive assistant to the Director of Schools and Rutherford County School Board is a local treasure.
She came to the district in 1986 and, in the 34 years since her apprehensive arrival, Michaels has served nine directors — two of which were elected, five appointed and a pair of interims — and countless school board members, including 15 members in just the past 10 years.
“She is such a dynamic presence in the Central Office,” said Dr. Mark Byrnes, a former School Board chairman and current provost at Middle Tennessee State University. “She does a very hard job extremely well and always has a smile on her face.”
“Sometimes I’m in here working and I can hear her on the phone and she’s a good listener,” said current Director of Schools Bill Spurlock. “I think that’s what makes her such an effective communicator.”
Spurlock added, “I’ve seen people come in here who are upset over things and she listens and that listening, it kind of removes some of that tension. … One thing about Ms. Joyce, they know she’s listening. I can hear her say, ‘Oh my,’ and it’s just little things like that, that goes a long way with building trust.”
Her compassion leads to trust and her ability to connect with anyone reaching out to his office “is her biggest strength,” Spurlock said.
“She juggles a lot of different duties,” Spurlock said. “You name it and she’s juggling it.”
In addition to managing the director’s daily schedule, overseeing contracts for all the principals and organizing the annual Teachers of the Year and retirement ceremonies on behalf of the director, Michaels also looks after all seven board members. She handles all paperwork for the Tennessee School Board Association, which includes everything from maintaining individual memberships to conference enrollments, keeps a record of all their training and professional development as well as managing the agenda for all board meetings, writing the minutes afterwards and helping to manage expectations.
Or, as Michaels often says, “My job is to make them look good.”
When he stopped to think about her job description, Byrnes said, “That would be very hard.”
Michaels also happens to be a much sought-after mother-figure — “She draws people to her. It’s just a southern thing,” said her niece Kim Edwards — and something of a personal psychologist for anyone who works at the Central Office.
“She’s kind of like the glue that holds the office together,” said Spurlock, who added, “She knows a lot about the traditions, and she knows about the operational part of the system.”
“We all have a different perspective of the Central Office based on what role we’ve had,” Byrnes said, “but from my view of it, she’s absolutely essential to the operation of the Central Office and to the operation of the school board. And in that sense, yes, she’s clearly an institution.”
Former School Board Chairman Wayne Blair deemed Michaels “my highwater mark for perfection,” while current Chairman Jim Estes said, “How do you explain somebody who’s almost perfect? Jim, her husband, might say differently, but as far as a colleague, everything she does is perfect.”
Estes added, “Her raising probably has a lot to do with that.”
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Joyce (Jones) Michaels is the second of three children born in DeKalb County, Tennessee, to Willie Pearl and Houston Gray Jones.
Her daddy was a small farmer with cows, corn and a big garden spread out over 20 acres of their own and some additional land that he leased.
Houston was up and out of the house by sunrise seven days a week and did not stop working until the sun went down, but he always planned his work to have time to sit at the dinner table with his family. Willie Pearl was a worker too. She made a breakfast every morning for her three children — Houston Allen, Joyce and Steve — and served lunch and dinner every day as well as looking after everyone and everything but the farm work.
No one complained in the Jones house.
They simply went about their business.
Well, truth be told, Willie Pearl never cared much for her name, so she never told anyone either. Instead, by the time she was married, and the Jones’ moved to Rutherford County shortly after Joyce was born, the matriarch of the family was known by everyone as Mrs. Jones.
After they got older, her children encouraged her to go ahead and change her name.
She never did.
It was not until after Willie Pearl passed away 32 years ago that her family found a birth certificate tucked away in an old family Bible that had been passed down through the generations.
Her name was Nancy.
“She wouldn’t like that I was telling you all this,” said Joyce, blushing.
“That’s Joyce,” said Edwards, who is the attendance coordinator for Rutherford County Schools.
Besides Joyce, Edwards is the only daughter in a family of sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, “so she took care of me” and “spoiled me rotten.”
Likewise, Edwards also described her grandmother Willie Pearl the same way she described her aunt Joyce — loving.
“My grandmother was very much a people person,” Edwards said. “She liked the people around her and (my father Allen and Joyce) both get a very strong work ethic from my grandfather.
“My grandfather was very much you get up and you go work. He did lots of different things, but always worked and worked hard and believed in work.”
Houston instilled that work ethic in his children.
While her older brother worked alongside their father from a young age, Joyce never much cared for farming although she loves the outdoors and even today prefers living on the edge of town as opposed to the middle of everything.
“I’m a country girl,” she said.
She went to McFadden Elementary School, where she once won the county spelling bee, before attending Central High School. In addition to being involved in multiple social groups, Joyce was also a member of the National Honor Society.
After graduating from Central, she studied business at Middle Tennessee State University before taking a clerical job in Nashville working for the telephone company. Joyce and several other young ladies rode a bus back and forth from Murfreesboro back when there were only two lanes in either direction on I-24.
The bus ride got old and, in November 1957, she applied for a job at the General Electric Motor Plant.
She still remembers waiting in the lobby for an interview at the same time as her future husband, Jim Michaels. Joyce was hired to work in the human resources department, and Jim was hired as an engineer in the plant after transferring from Pennsylvania.
“That was kind of fun really,” she recalled. “Of course, I didn’t know him, and he didn’t know me. … But I recall seeing him sitting over there waiting his turn.”
They talked from time to time whenever Jim came into the office or if they saw one another during their lunch break. One conversation led to another and, Joyce said, “It was kind of a surprise,” when Jim finally asked her out.
They got married Jan. 5, 1962.
Nearly 60 years later, Joyce said he told her, “He should have just kept going. He’s kidding.”
A moment later, she added, “Yeah, he’s cute.”
She was happy working there and never ever contemplated working somewhere else. That was until 1986, when Jerry F. Gaither was elected to the director of schools position, and he asked if she would consider coming to Rutherford County Schools and working as his administrative assistant.
Her first response was “I don’t know.”
When he asked again, she said, “I’d have to know more.”
When they met, Joyce said she did not know him very well and had only worked together for a brief time at GE. That said, Gaither was rather persuasive, and Joyce went to work at the Central Office, which was nothing more than “a little bitty building on Memorial” Drive.
“It was nice of him to do that,” said Joyce, who was admittedly frightened. “I would have never applied.”
She added, “It just kind of fell in place.”
She remembers Gaither wanting to develop a fast pace and liked to see things happening. Back then the district consisted of half as many schools — 24 as opposed to 48 — and the IT department was not yet an idea. In fact, Joyce typed the school board agendas and minutes on her IBM typewriter.
“I can’t imagine how I did it,” Joyce said. “I really can’t.”
She saw her role as making Gaither look better.
And 34 years later, that’s how she still sees her role.
Gaither served from 1986 to 1990 when Elam Carlton was elected for a second time. Though the precedent had long been established to bring his own assistant, Carlton kept Joyce in the role.
It is believed to be the first time in the district’s history that an administrative assistant served two different directors. And Joyce has now served nine of them — Gaither, Carlton, Dr. Roy L. Ragsdale, J. Hulon Watson, Ken Nolan, Joe Phillips, Harry Gill Jr., Don Odom and Bill Spurlock.
Spurlock, who became director in July 2018, acknowledged all nine directors Joyce has worked with have been different.
“I can say this without any kind of embellishing, everyone has been successful,” Spurlock said. “Each had their own leadership style, but — I want to be perfectly frank — I think, she has a lot to do with that too. She anticipates roadblocks that you may have a little tunnel vision, so you don’t see it, and she never imposed herself on you, but she always — with that kind of, you know, motherly instinct — gives you some feedback that’s very effective.”
Spurlock added, “She’ll come to me and say, ‘What do you think about this’ and, quite frankly, 99.9 percent of the time, I’ll say, ‘Yeah, that’s good. I like that.’”
It was that way for Odom and Gill and the others.
The year before Gill was named director, the district had two interim directors and Michaels helped bridge the transition.
“They were all smart enough to keep her,” Estes said. “Not many people could survive that. I’m sure she’s had board members that were hard to get along with and I’ve known a bunch of them. Surely none of them were hard to get along with for her.”
Byrnes said, “That’s quite a balancing act because sometimes the director and the board don’t always see eye to eye … so it requires some real diplomatic skills to keep both of those happy.”
Joyce smiles when she thinks of Byrnes having been her boss.
When he was growing up, Mark’s younger brother Matt and Joyce’s son Clay were classmates and played tennis together. Mark would often drive the two boys to tennis practice and then Joyce would pick them up.
“Isn’t that kind of funny?” she asked. “He was a good board chair.”
Byrnes recalls signing paperwork when he was first elected to the school board. When he finished, he remembers Joyce said, “Welcome to the family.”
“Even though we were there to do a job and we were at work, in a sense there was a family atmosphere—sometimes a dysfunctional family—but there was a family atmosphere there,” Byrnes said. “She really is the key to that.”
He also recalled one of his favorite parts of being a chairman was having to sit with Joyce afterward and sign all the official documents reflecting whatever actions had been taken by the board.
Some of those meetings could go well into the night.
“I always enjoyed that time because we would sort of solve all the problems—in our minds—and review what went on,” Byrnes explained, “and where we needed to go next.”
Byrnes cited her tenure and ability to provide historical context to current matters as a valuable commodity for the county.
Spurlock agreed.
“I surround myself with people who have strengths in areas that I have challenges and she can connect those dots,” Spurlock said. “That’s the reason why our system has rolled on for so long, because it has changed dramatically since she’s come on board and it will continue to evolve.”
“I could not imagine serving on the Rutherford County School Board, much less as the chairman, without Joyce Michaels’ assistance and attention to detail,” Blair said.
“She knows all the little quirks about all members,” said Estes, who joked, “Not that we’re quirky or anything.”
Joyce’s ability to manage big personalities, is something she developed on her own because, as Edwards explained, “it’s so different from anything my grandparents did.”
But it is a Jones family trait to look for the best in people.
“She’s very faithful to her job,” Edwards said. “It makes people — her bosses — trust her.”
“She is so respectful of everyone,” Spurlock said. “I’ve never heard her say anything in a negative way. I think she’s a very kind-hearted person and I really think that this district, when you peel back all the layers of the good things that we’ve done in our school system, I think you have to go back to people like Joyce.”
Joyce, who turns 83 in August, has made an undeniable impact on Rutherford County Schools.
In spite of the long hours and late nights, which gave her husband Jim time to restore old cars, Joyce’s priorities have always remained God, family and then work.
Her son Clay, a pilot in the United States Navy, works at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and his wife Lynn works N.C.I.S. — the actual Naval Criminal Investigative Services, not the popular long-running television series. Her two grandsons — Cole, 10, and Grant, 8 — have been the sole reason she’s ever contemplated a word she almost never says — retirement.
It would give her more time to spend with Cole and Grant as well as her niece and nephews and their kids and, nowadays, their children too.
But it’s not that simple.
“It’s a very hard decision,” Joyce said. “I deal with it quite often lately.”
Unlike so many others who often talk about looking forward to retiring, Joyce has never once — not a single time that she can remember — said she will be glad when she can finally retire.
Yes. There are days when she’s tired.
Yes. She’s used a few more days off than in past years but considering she has accumulated more than 680 sick days, like her daddy, Joyce wakes up and there’s work to be done.
“I am so blessed and so thankful that I’ve loved my job and I felt like I’ve helped people,” Joyce concluded. “I may not have, but as long as you feel it in your heart.”
PHOTO / KEITH RYAN CARTWRIGHT