Trainer Joy Kloss, who ran Fox Hunt Farm in Lumberton, N.J., died suddenly on Thanksgiving night in Tryon, N.C. She was 71.
Joy Kloss, second from right, with Leslie Howard, Anne Kursinski and McLain Ward at the 2016 memorial service for Frank Chapot. (Photo © 2016 by Nancy Jaffer)
A USEF judge, she was a respected trainer who gave clinics and was involved in horse sales.
Callan Solem, who met Joy through her own mentor, the late Carol Hofmann Thompson, called Joy “the consummate horseman. There was nothing about anything at the barn or the training she couldn’t do herself. She afforded so many possibilities to so many people.”
Added Callan, “You always knew where you stood with her. That was a working woman. There was not any work she was not willing and able to do when it was going to make things better for a horse.”
Joy’s close friend of more than a half-century, Nancy Dawn Ashway, her classmate at Southern Seminary and Junior College in Virginia, was just on vacation with her earlier this month.
“She had great horsemanship. She was straight to the point. She didn’t coddle her students,” Nancy recalled.
Kathy Brown Serio, a former student, paid tribute to Joy on her Facebook page, calling her a “fierce competitor, a loyal friend, and a force to be reckoned with…”
Survivors include Joy’s daughter, Kayley White (Al) and two grandchildren.