Joyce MacDonald Greenfield

Joyce MacDonald Greenfield, born March 4, 1944, in Wareham, Massachusetts, passed away peacefully on March 7, 2026, three days after her 82nd birthday.

Raised in an Army family, Joyce spent parts of her childhood and many summers on Cape Cod, living also in England, Georgia, and Washington State. These early experiences taught her adaptability and the grace of making friends quickly. She cherished her time at Monument Beach, where she divided her summers between her MacDonald family on her father’s side and her Philbrick family on her mother’s side.

After high school in Washington and a year at Washington State University, she moved to New York and became a flight attendant for Pan American World Airways, embracing the travel she had long desired. She married Arthur Koehler, raised three children in Stony Brook, New York, and later Madison, Connecticut, navigating single motherhood with resilience and humor through the 1970s and ’80s.

A lifelong desire to become an artist guided her later years. With the loving support of her second husband, James Greenfield, she completed her bachelor’s degree at Southern Connecticut State University and devoted herself to painting. Beginning with watercolors and finding her true voice in oils, she captured the interplay of darkness and light and the restless moods of the sea. She taught at the Creative Arts Workshop and SCSU, volunteered generously at CAW and City Gallery, and returned each summer to Monhegan Island, Maine, where some of her finest work emerged.

Joyce traveled widely, marched for the causes she believed in, and formed deep, enduring friendships across every chapter of her life. She found special joy in gathering her family together, most recently at Thanksgiving this past November.

Predeceased by her husband Jim in 2019, she is survived by her children, Kristin Alexander (Gil) of Arlington, Massachusetts, Kurt Koehler of New Haven, and Heidi Rogers (Andy) of Fairfield, Connecticut; her sister, Patti Carter (Cole) of Spokane, Washington; her brother, Geoffrey MacDonald of Massachusetts; her nephew, Kyle Carter of San Francisco; and five grandchildren, Will Koehler, Ethan and Sam Alexander, and Drew and Evelyn Rogers, who shared a deep and mutual adoration with their Grammie.