Joyce Longworth died peacefully at home on November 6th with family at her side, just over a month after celebrating her 90th birthday. Joyce will be remembered as a generous and compassionate wife, mother, grandmother, sister and friend.
Joyce was born in Beirut, Lebanon to the late Francis Kettaneh and Mary Kettaneh (Shoucair). She arrived in the U.S. in 1941, four days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. She attended the Spence School in New York City, and earned her B.A. in English Literature from Bryn Mawr College in 1956. During her childhood and throughout her life, the happiness and well-being of her siblings Tony, Lorna and Eddie were of paramount importance to her. After school, she worked in information services at the United Nations.
She met her future husband Ruskin at a party in New York City, and after a transatlantic romance, they married in 1957 and settled in Wilmington, Delaware. While raising her four daughters, Joyce served as a Girl Scout leader and wrote book reviews for the Wilmington Morning Journal. She worked on the education committee of the Greater Wilmington Development Council, which was responsible for locating Delaware Technical Community College in downtown Wilmington.
In 1971, after volunteering at Winterthur Museum, Joyce became a staff and teaching guide until her retirement in 2019. She specialized in Empire furniture and Chinese export porcelain, and was a Member of the American Ceramic Circle, the Northern Ceramic Society (England), and the Wedgwood Society. Joyce was the principal author of a book on the history of St. Joseph on the Brandywine church in Greenville, Delaware, and sang in the church’s choir for several decades.
Joyce was cherished for her hospitality, welcoming family and friends from near and far to her homes in Wilmington and Chatham, Cape Cod. Her annual Christmas parties gathered neighbors for caroling and her famous hot chocolate. She loved traveling the world with her husband and daughters, exploring museums and cultural sites, collecting ceramics and other decorative art objects for which she had a lifelong passion.Joyce is survived by her sister Lorna Kettaneh, her daughters and sons-in-law Monica Longworth and Michael Coyne, Kim Longworth, Jennifer Longworth and Matt Meyer, and Alys Longworth and Jon Hope, as well as six grandchildren, Aidan and Glynis Coyne, Alexander and Jacqueline Wallis, and Aubrey and Noel Meyer.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be offered at Saint Joseph on the Brandywine, 10 Old Church Road, Greenville, DE, 19807 on Friday, November 14, 2025 at 10:00 am. Interment will be private. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Joyce’s honor to the World Food Program’s food relief for Lebanon campaign at www.wfpusa.org/countries/lebanon/.
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