Carl Brecht doesn't speak much to his wife anymore. When he does try to talk, Joyce can hardly understand him. But there is one phrase he never has trouble with.

"Every night when I put him to bed, I give him a kiss and say 'I love you'," Joyce said. "He always says 'I love you too,' so plainly. He's never forgotten that."

Each morning, the 76-year-old from North Warren spends a half hour alone. She reads the paper and drinks coffee, collecting her thoughts before the real work begins. Then, she heads to the back bedroom of her house and wakes up her husband, Carl. With the help of her brother, Dick, she bathes him, changes him, gets him dressed and uses a device called a Hoyer Lift to lower him into his wheelchair. Almost two-hours later, Carl is ready to eat breakfast.

While Carl takes a nap, the remainder of the day normally consists of doing the wash and babysitting two of her grandson's children.

Hard work has always been the norm for Joyce. She was born in 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression. Her father, Richard, eventually found work taking care of a wealthy couple's summer home in the hills of Warren. The family lived in a nearby farmhouse with no electricity or running water for eight years.

"We had to haul it (the water) from two miles away in milk cans," Joyce said.

Joyce and her siblings, Richard, Jackie and Ann, also went door-to-door selling apple pies for a quarter and huckleberries for 10 cents a quart.

For entertainment, Joyce remembers stringing acorns, sneaking behind the barn to smoke corn silk and making a playhouse out of the horse stalls.

Joyce and Carl met when she was nearly 16. Her girlfriend was taking her boyfriend out, and Joyce, not wanting to be a third wheel with no date, said she wasn't going to go with them. But Joyce's girlfriend had a prospect in mind. Her friend "Curly" was almost 19 and had just gotten out of the army.

"She asked him, 'Hey, Curly, wanna go out with Joyce Smith?'" Joyce recalled.

Carl or "Curly" was quick to respond:

"Well, I'll try anything once."

"He was very assertive," Joyce remembers. "As soon as he got in the car he kissed me. It was exciting to me, an older man, you know?"

They married Aug. 25, 1951, and had seven children. When Carl's young nephew, Jim, was parentless, Joyce took him in and raised him as her own.

"She was very involved with the kids," Joyce's daughter, Jill Milloy, said. "They always took us camping and we would cook together."

"It was chaotic," Joyce said of the crowded household. "But I worked during the day and (Carl) worked during the night, so we took it in shifts. When I came home from work, he had supper on the table."

As Carl grew older, he had dozens of surgeries for his hip and knees. The crippling blow came in the form of a stroke. Several more mini-strokes followed when Carl fell out of his wheelchair and hit his head on the pavement under a caretaker's negligent watch, Milloy said. He now suffers from dementia.

It's the bittersweet memories of block-parties and the chaotic disarray of the household that Joyce holds onto when the exhaustion at the end of a long day takes hold.

"Every day (Carl's) here is a blessing to me," Joyce said. "He was the perfect father. If I said I wanted to go to Timbuktu, he'd be right in the car to take me."

Joyce takes Carl out of the house every day. The pair goes to lunch once a week and share a fish dinner every Friday night in town.

When the pain of Carl's situation becomes too much to bear for family and friends, Joyce has a quiet way of bringing some comfort to the circumstances.

"If you know something's not quite right or whatever, she'll look at you with a reassuring look that everything's okay, even though I'm sure she knows that everything's not okay," Milloy said, through tears.

Shirley Betts, one of Joyce's best friends since high school, said she's touched by the loyalty and devotion Joyce shows to her husband, although it's hard for her to see the daily struggles the couple goes through.

"It just amazes me how very little she ever complains," Betts said.

Although Joyce can be stubborn and strong-willed, Milloy admitted, you can't help but like her.

"She's the most giving person I know," she said.

Joyce has her own way of looking at the positives in her situation:

"If you can get up and take nourishment, you're good for another day. There're a lot of people worse off than we are."

Kalyn Milloy is a sophomore at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. A native of Fairview Park, Ohio, she is the daughter of Patrick Milloy and Jill Milloy-Garrett. She visits her grandmother three or four times a year.