"It was easy to avert one's eyes from Joyce Brenham. For more than 25 years, downtown visitors avoided the homeless woman as much as she avoided them.
“It was always scary to talk to her,” said Bill Lyons, owner of downtown eateries Schilo's Delicatessen and Casa Rio. “You never knew if she was going to say ‘Hi' or if you were going to get the finger.”
After battling cancer and decades of living only on the streets, Brenham died late Wednesday in a clean bed at a San Antonio hospice. She was believed to be 57.
Neither a downtown character nor an urban eccentric, Brenham — who told people she grew up a foster child and came to San Antonio from Indiana with a lover who abandoned her — kept mostly to herself. Beginning in the late 1980s, Brenham made her home on the downtown streets, said Catherine Martinez, one of the downtown Alamo City Amigos who referred to Brenham as “Miss Joyce.”
For better or for worse, it's going to be unusual passing her favorite spot and not seeing her there.
Homeless woman's life helped humanity
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Joyce Brenham the "SA Homeless lady" dies
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