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JOY HINTZ, 1926-2009
TIFFIN - Joy Hintz, who championed the rights of migrant farm workers
locally and in the 1980s worked for peace in Central America, died
Monday in Volunteers of America Autumnwood Care Center, where she lived
for six years.
She was 83 and died from complications of Alzheimer's disease, her
daughter Julia Smith said.
Mrs. Hintz's interest in the working and living conditions of migrant
workers grew from her membership in Church Women United of Tiffin, of
which she was president. Starting in the mid-1960s, she visited migrant
camps, conducted research, and wrote of her findings.
She said corporations were winners in what she called the
"food-production pyramid." The victims are migrant workers, family
farmers, and consumers, who need to form coalitions instead of feud, she
had said.
"Our food-production system cannot continue to operate as if some humans
are superior and deserve more, while others are inferior and deserve
less," she said during a 1981 speech at Glenwood Lutheran Church in
Toledo. "Migrant people do not seek handouts and charity, but equity,
peace, compassion, and justice."
Baldemar Velasquez, founder and president of the Farm Labor Organizing
Committee in Toledo, recalled last night that she was involved from the
earliest years of his efforts.
"I appreciated Joy tremendously," he said. "She had one of the most
compassionate hearts of anyone you'd want to meet. When she listened to
our arguments about self-determination rather than handouts, she
understood the difference between charity and justice."
She studied the wages and working conditions of migrants. She wrote
several books and articles and compiled anthologies of workers' poems,
essays, and drawings.
"I think she had a very strong of justice," said her son, Loren, who was
in Central America with the Peace Corps from 1978-82.
"She definitely became very concerned about what was happening in
Central America," he said.
She helped found a Tiffin group for peace and justice in Central
America. She and her husband visited their son. But she returned several
times for visits to Nicaragua and Honduras.
"She had no sense of danger," her husband, Howard, said.
She was on a migrant workers committee set up by former Ohio Gov. John
Gilligan and was president of the Committee on Migrant Relations of
Tiffin. She was a leader in a group, Auxilio y Amistad, or Aid and
Friendship.
She was in the Farmworker Advocate Hall of Fame and received the NAACP
Peacemaker Award.
Mrs. Hintz was a volunteer at a local domestic violence shelter and
compiled the women's stories in a publication that was used as a text by
a California professor. She also helped begin Seneca County Family
Planning Services.
For her work, she was inducted in 1993 into the Ohio Women's Hall of
Fame.
Mrs. Hintz was born in Zanesville, Ohio, and grew up in Columbus. She
received bachelor of arts and bachelor of science degrees from Ohio
State University.
She and her husband moved to Tiffin when he was hired for the science
faculty of the then-Heidelberg College and she taught school several
years in Tiffin and Attica, Ohio.
In 1956, she became curator of the Charles H. Jones Collection of
Minerals at Heidelberg, a position she held for more than 25 years.
Mrs. Hintz was a member of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
and St. John United Church of Christ, both of Tiffin.
Surviving are her husband, Howard, whom she married June 15, 1952; son,
Loren Hintz; daughters, Connie Nusbaum and Julia Smith; seven
grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
There will be no visitation. Graveside services will be at 11 a.m.
Monday in St. Jacob Cemetery on Seneca County Road 38 north of Republic.
Arrangements are by the Hoffmann-Gottfried-Mack Funeral Home, Tiffin.
The family suggests tributes to Buckeye Trail Association, Worthington,
Ohio; Quest for Peace, Hyattsville, Md., or a charity of the donor's
choice.
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