Joyce H. Bruni

Joyce Hall Bruni Died peacefully surrounded by her loving family at her home in Boca Raton, FL., on March 7, 2025. She was born April 15, 1930, the second child of Raymond and Ruth Hall.

Joyce grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and was a very athletic youngster despite being hampered by asthma as a young child. Her Father died when she was 7 years old and the family of Ruth Hall and children Betty and Joyce moved to a house next to Webster’s Pond on Eastern Ave., where they learned to ice skate at an early age and swim at Good Harbor Beach, which was close by……

In High School Joyce was Head Cheerleader and Treasurer of her class senior year among many other social clubs and activities.

After Gloucester High she went to a nursing school nearby and became a registered nurse. She moved to Back Bay on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston and lived there while she was working as a surgical nurse, before marrying her high school sweetheart, Bill MacDonald, who had graduated from Tufts University nearby.

Bill and Joyce had their first son, Scott, in 1957 and moved to the Philadelphia area in 1958. Joyce joined the Junior League and made lifelong friends there, including Phyllis and Sam Fyock.

Another son, Jeffrey, was born two years later and they moved to a nice home in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.  While raising a family Joyce was a nurse at Bryn Mawr Hospital and went to West Chester University to get her bachelor’s degree at night all while driving two children to football practice, baseball practice, swim team practice at St Alban’s Swim Club (where Joyce was an avid tennis player) and PTA meetings.

Life was filled with skiing in the Poconos, vacations on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, and trips back to Gloucester in the summer and winter school breaks……. Life was quite idyllic in the Elgin Park neighborhood in the rolling hills of Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

In the spring of 1972, Bill MacDonald died while having open-heart bypass surgery at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital……at 42 years of age Joyce was a widow.

Raising two boys on her own in the 70’s, Joyce changed careers slightly and became the school nurse for Clifton Heights Middle School in the Upper Darby School District. She also started attending Villanova University in the evenings and received her Master’s Degree in Counseling.

She loved her job at Clifton Heights…….and they still went skiing in the Poconos and summers down the Jersey Shore……. Then a call from a classmate from Gloucester High School started her off on a whole new adventure; one that would bring her to Boca Raton, Florida for the next 48 years.

“People destined to meet will do so by chance at precisely the right moment” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

In the winter of 1975 / 76 Don Bruni an old classmate of Bill and Joyce’s called sending condolences and more……Joyce looked him up in her yearbook that night.

In October 1976, Joyce married Don Bruni in Hollywood, Florida. Don had relocated to South Florida. Joyce married Don while her youngest was still a senior in high school and stayed in Newtown Square, PA until he graduated in the spring of 1977 and went off to college. Scott was a sophomore at the University of Delaware.

Don and Joyce bought a home on a canal off the Intracoastal Waterway in Boca Raton, FL., in the summer of ’77. It would be their home for the next 48 years……She now had four new stepchildren, six in all now.  Five of them would make this house their home at different times in their relocation to Florida from the North-East.

Later, after the children were all moved out, they bought a 30-foot Trojan Cabin Cruiser and spent endless days cruising the intracoastal, Florida Keys, Bimini and the Bahamas.

Don Bruni was in the Publishing and Printing business, and Joyce worked for the CDC in Palm Beach County and later managed the school nursing program for the Palm Beach County School District.

They joined the Boca Del Mar Country Club where they met the people that would be their friends for the remainder of their time in South Florida, including Edna and Nigel Smith. Joyce played competitively on the Boca Del Mar tennis team for the better part of 20 years…… and after giving up tennis took up golf in her early 70’s. Don and Joyce would travel extensively back to the Northeast and Canada playing golf in different parts of the country they wanted to see.

She loved Life. She loved her family, and she was incredibly warm and caring. She was in her heart a nurse and she cared for all of us……. 

Joyce is survived by her husband Donald Bruni, children Scott MacDonald (Deb), Jeff MacDonald and stepsons Scott Bruni, Steven Bruni and stepdaughter Donna Bruni Cox (Charley).  She is preceded in death by sister Betty Hall Meuse and Stepson Mark Bruni.

It seems trite to say hers was a life well lived because she truly was an inspiration to everyone that knew her.

A memorial service will be held for Joyce on her birthday April 15, 2025, at Glick Funeral Home 3600 N. Federal Highway Boca Raton, Fl. at 11:00 am.

Joyces life was lived between these milestones and those beautiful memories are cherished dearly by those who lived them with her. 

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