Joyce Wise; 1929-2014: Deputy registrar held party posts

3/21/2014

FREMONT — Joyce Wise, a former deputy registrar who held elected positions in the Democratic Party, died Tuesday in Elmwood Assisted Living of Fremont. She was 84.

She had bone marrow cancer, her daughter Kay said.

Mrs. Wise, formerly of Sandusky County’s Jackson Township, was deputy registrar of the license bureau in Fremont from 1971 to 1974, during the administration of Gov. John J. Gilligan, a Democrat.

Mrs. Wise was first elected in 1974 as a member of the Democratic Party state central committee from the 5th Congressional District and was re-elected every two years into the 1980s. She was a member of the state party’s executive committee; its federation of women, and the women’s group of the Sandusky County party. Her late husband, Charles, was chairman of the party’s central committee in Sandusky County from 1964 to 1974.

She was loyal to the party’s platform, and she enjoyed being involved, said her son Roger, a former Jackson Township trustee and precinct committeeman in the county Democratic Party.

“We always said the politics had to be enjoyable, and if it wasn’t there was no sense being in it, because it could drive you crazy,” he said.

She represented a relentlessly Republican congressional district. Republican stalwart Delbert Latta represented the district in Congress during her tenure; his son, Bob, now does. Most summer weekends, she and her husband attended a church or ethnic or town festivals in the district.

She was 2003 Sandusky County Democrat of the year and was a recipient of the Helbert Award, named for two women who were party activists.

Mrs. Wise was a charter member of the National Organization for Women chapter in Ottawa County, her son said.

Born May 17, 1929, to Mary Ruth and Garnet Sherer, she grew up on a Jackson Township farm. She was a 1948 graduate of Jackson Burgoon School.

She was a volunteer for the Red Cross and a supporter of the Farmers Union at the local, state, and national levels. For about a decade, she was a bus driver for the Lakota Local Schools.

She and her husband married June 20, 1948. He died Oct. 3, 2005.

Surviving are her sons, Roger and Matt; daughters, Kay Polk and Kerry Barth; brothers, George and Carl Sherer; five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

A celebration of life service is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday in Trinity United Methodist Church, Fremont. Arrangements are by the Keller-Ochs-Koch-Mason Funeral Home, Fremont. The family suggests tributes to Birchard Public Library or the Sandusky County Historical Society in Fremont.

Contact Mark Zaborney at: mzaborney@theblade.com or 419-724-6182.