Joyce Cole

     I've been writing short essays about some of the interesting people I come in contact with, formulating products and upgrading their work methods. It's about time I mentioned the lady who is responsible for all of this. The one person who never let me down or disappointed me in our 23 years together.

She died for this business and me, and I hope all the effort she gave was worth it. Sometimes I have my doubts.

Joyce was something else, she came out of the cotton fields of Georgia, working at 5 years of age for fifty cents a day picking cotton. A runaway at 12 years of age to NYC with no money. She met Harry Belafonte, Sidney Portier, and Adam Clayton Powell. Beat cancer twice in her 30's and when I met her, she was living for 18 years in a townhouse at 69th and Park Ave. She was 46 and a professional business woman, promoting concerts, working as an office coordinator, and head bookkeeper for Lee's Art Supply on 57th St. She was single, no children, no attachments, just waiting for me to come along. She was a beautiful person, inside and out, and she lit up everyone she came in contact with, male or female. She just happened to be the sister of Nat King Cole.

She was very smart and determined, did not smoke or drink, and hated the mention of drugs. She had traveled all over the world when she was young and got that out of her system.

She had been a paid government witness, testifying against the Secretary of Labor under Reagan, concerning mafia payoffs in exchange for government contracts. She was the bookkeeper. It was all documented in Fortune magazine, May '82 cover story and in many NY papers. Her life had been threatened and she had 24 hour FBI bodyguards. She was given a deposit from the New York Times for her life story that was mysteriously stopped for no reason. She was involved with high-rise housing in Harlem with developer William Zeckedorf. Met with Mayor David Dinkins at Gracie Mansion on more than one occasion. She put up with me for 23 years.

She died June 6th, 2007 at the age of 70, but she looked 42. She was in perfect health, but was taken out with a brain aneurysm in 30 seconds prior to eating dinner in a restaurant.

She was a very classy lady and didn't deserve to die under such brutal circumstances. She fainted at the table and the owner, thinking it was drug related, because I looked white, told me to get her out because his dinner crowd was coming in and it looked bad for business. When the paramedics arrived she was gone, and it has taken me three years before I could write this down.

Just days before she had been rehearsing with a jazz trio at the Kaufman Center because she loved music so much and wanted to accomplish one more thing. She had made her money with me.

We were planning to move to a loft so she could sing, rehearse, and entertain more, and I could set up an easel for my painting. But it didn't work out as she was robbed of her life. She spoiled me, took care of me, loved me for 23 years, and losing someone like her is irreplaceable. Her life story would make a great movie, and be an inspiration to others.

Robert Doak