After a long life devoted to the service of others, we are sad to share of the passing of Fran Joswick on July 22, 2022 at her home in Sequim, WA.
Fran was our founding executive director who, along with our founding board leaders Derek and Nancy Lewis, started the Orange County Riding Center (The Shea Center’s original name) in 1978.
We are lucky we were able to celebrate The Shea Center’s 40th anniversary in 2018 with Fran in attendance as our guest of honor at the Annual BBQ and Family Faire. She met many of our staff, volunteers, clients, and horses and saw the real-life impact of her life’s work.
It all started in 1978, when Fran, a social worker and ardent equestrienne, heard about a therapeutic riding center in Michigan. She wanted to start something similar in Southern California and united with Nancy and Derek Lewis to found Orange County Riding Center, Inc. (OCRC)
Our first rider was Michael Lewis. With a shared passion for serving persons with disabilities with the unique nature of equine assisted services, Fran, her husband Jerry, and Derek and Nancy found a common purpose that united them. “Building the program and finding community support for the Joswick Center was Fran’s priority,” says her daughter Beth Evans. “The riding center was the air our family breathed.”
The Shea Center has had three locations: a stable in Mission Viejo, then a facility off of the Ortega Highway and then eventually we moved to our current location in 1983. In 1989 when Fran retired and was planning her move to Hawaii, the OCRC was named in her honor as the Fran Joswick Therapeutic Riding Center.
In 2002, when the J.F. Shea Co., Inc. donated the land where the Center is located to enable a permanent home, we were renamed the J.F. Shea Therapeutic Riding Center, home of the Fran Joswick Program. Fran was characteristically selfless in her response to the new name citing that the most important thing was for the program to have stability and a permanent home and praised the generosity of the donation.
The Shea Center celebrates 45 years in 2023 and we are deeply grateful for Fran’s vision and tenacity, her selflessness, for her husband and family’s unending support and for the foundation laid for the thousands of lives touched each year by The Shea Center. We thank and honor Fran for her selfless dedication. Her impact continues to be felt each day in the commitment to excellence and passion for service to persons with disabilities. Fran is survived by her three children and multiple grandchildren.