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.
First Published April 3, 2009, 9:46 a.m.
