Honorary mother of Downtown celebrates 60 years of marriage

Gordon and Joyce Summer are celebrating their 60th anniversary on May 11 – another major accomplishment for the couple who are a cornerstone of the Downtown community.

Originally from New Jersey, halfway through their marriage, the pair moved to Downtown San Diego in 1993. The Summers had always wanted to live in a city but not one as crowded as the big apple. San Diego became the perfect opportunity to switch from suburban to urban while they swapped coasts.

Thirty years later, the Summers still live in Downtown, where they have seen it undergo massive redevelopment and become a more lived-in city. Gordon remembers walking between two buildings in the ‘90s on Broadway for a meeting around 5 p.m. on a visit before their move.

“I was walking… and looked up at these beautiful buildings. I said, ‘Gee it looks like a city.’ And then I noticed on the sidewalk: no people. What is this? Didn’t make sense at all,” he recalled.

He later learned everyone commuted to the suburbs at the time. There was no nightlife at all in Downtown, the couple said. Still, Joyce quickly made friends and became involved in the politics and development of the neighborhood. She organized for Downtown to have its own planning group and chaired many committees. Today, she works with the Downtown Partnership to help HOAs and building managers know what services the Partnership offers. Her long contact list helps people facing an issue get connected to someone who can help.

“I get involved in everything and I’m very good at networking. Well, I don’t call it networking. I call it bringing people together for good,” said Joyce. “I love introducing people to other people where they can help each other.”

So key has she been in organizing Downtown neighbors that in Sept. 2004 the City of San Diego made a Joyce Summer Day. At the time, she told council members “the city of San Diego is like my third child.” In 2020, a portion of Tweet Street Park on 10th Avenue was named after her for her efforts in fixing it up.

Joyce’s local rise to prominence belies some of the dynamics of their first decades of their marriage. The pair met at a Sweet 16 party when Joyce was dazzled by an 18-year-old Gordon. Joyce was dating another boy at the time but did not let that stop her.

“I dumped him that night. I remember standing in front of the garage… [Gordon and I] were chatting and that was it,” Joyce said. Gordon assumed she was 16 like her friend, something Joyce let him believe for a while. “I’ve known [Gordon] since I was 14 going on 15.”

Her brother Alan Massarky said the family story goes that when Joyce returned from their first date, she told their mother “Isn’t he dreamy?” While they broke up a few times in the ensuing years and saw other people, they eloped when Joyce was 17 and Gordon was 21 in 1963.

The most challenging years of their relationship pre-date their marriage. When Gordon spent six months with the National Guard, his friends saw this as their opportunity to court the enigmatic Joyce. One even proposed and on Gordon and Joyce’s wedding day begged Joyce’s mother to stop the ceremony. Despite this intervention, he remains a good friend of the magnanimous couple.

Since marrying, the couple said the love has always been there. Their most recent challenges have arisen form Gordon’s health crises and Joyce being placed in the lonely role of caregiver.

“She’s had a tough time with me,” Gordon said.

“I kinda dote on him. I treat him like a child,” Joyce admitted.

“My mother also told her that I was high maintenance,” Gordon said amid laughter. When the pair finished teasing each other, Joyce added, “We still love each other very much.”

The relationship itself has never been in question.

“They have never wavered from their love for each other or for Glenn and I and the rest of the family or friends,” said their son Todd Summer, who works in San Diego as an associate vice president at SDSU.

The relationship has undergone change though, through new jobs, cities and raising kids. Joyce dropped out of college when they married. At different companies, she would become a top sales person in the region or nation only to move when Gordon’s advertising job took them someplace else.

Todd and Glenn, the pair’s sons, noted that their mother’s work helped them view women as strong and taught them everyone has the same opportunity and can achieve whatever they want to achieve.

Eventually, Gordon grew eager to leave New York and jumped at a job offer from a new friend that would bring them to San Diego.

“I said to Joyce, ‘We’re going to San Diego.’ She said, ‘Well what’s the salary?’ ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask him.’ She said, ‘What’s the title?’ I said, ‘I don’t know; I’m gonna help him run his company,’” Gordon recalled. “We were that ready to go out here.”

“Well he was,” Joyce tempered his statement.

Despite not being consulted ahead of the decision to move cross country, Joyce quickly became involved in the Meridian building where they lived in the Marina District while she did not have a job. She also made fast friends with the people of Downtown and was unable to walk a block without someone greeting her. Since then, she has taken on countless projects benefitting the region and is known for being organized and bringing people together.

Nestled in their Cortez Hill apartment inside the Discovery building, Gordon explained, “In New York I had a career and I was ‘somebody’ right? When we came here, I am now Mr. Joyce and I’ve been Mr. Joyce ever since we moved to town here because she’s been very active and I have not.”

Gordon prefers it that way. Despite downplaying his role, his creativity and experience in marketing has been key to the development of Downtown. He picked out the color schemes of the Downtown neighborhoods reflected on signs and the two of them put on the Sand Castle championship on the pier for several years prior to the pandemic.

Todd noted that in recent years his parents transitioned from just being partners at home with family to sharing their work and volunteering.

“Anything I do, he helps me. Anything he does, I help him. We’re together 24/7,” Joyce said.

Gordon has edited reports, speeches and lent his artistic talent to her efforts.

“She really enjoys what she does,” he said. “She enjoys doing community work and I enjoy watching her enjoy.”

The Executive Director of the San Diego Downtown Partnership, Betsy Brennan, first met Joyce when Brennan was a new staffer for Council District 1. Joyce took to the time to meet all the young city staff.

Many years later, one of Brennan’s favorite memories was the party Joyce threw for her when she got a job at the Partnership. Brennan, a single mother, had just moved to San Diego and her children had yet to join her. Joyce, a talented cook, made meatballs— a homemade meal that nourished Brennan deeply. At the party, Brennan met the couple’s neighbors and friends, not just business owners.

“A lot of people know about things like the sand castles and a lot of the marketing ideas, but also just all the hours. Hours and hours and hours. Thousands of hours they put in,” said Brennan. “The amount of work they do behind the scenes is just immense— and this is over 30 years.”

Joyce refuses to ask people for money while opening her home for political events. Instead, whenever someone new is elected in Downtown or takes on a key role, she hosts ‘friendraising’ events, ensuring they meet all the key players they will be working with in a social setting as well as meeting some of the regular residents of the area.

Brennan said that while waiting for her children in the early months at the Partnership, Joyce and Gordon acted as her pseudo family. Today, she still depends on Joyce to alert her if there are rumors or changes in the city concerning the residents.

Joyce does not walk as far daily, but she still receives calls and texts asking for her assistance. A few months ago, Joyce learned that flooding had broken the elevators at a 29-story building and they had not been fixed for days. An elderly friend contacted her because she was running out of food and had no way to walk down the stairs.

Joyce contacted city council members and mayoral staff to no avail. Eventually Joyce went to the Partnership and Brennan was able to convince the city to intervene with the threat of Joyce going to the media if something was not done. The fire department then rescued the elderly and disabled residents trapped on the upper floors.

“I couldn’t understand why nobody wanted to help these people. It was terrible,” Joyce said. “When I said Downtown is like my third child I meant that. I really care about the people.”

Even while recounting the episode that demonstrated the limits of a politics based on personal relationships, Joyce was careful not to be too critical of the councilman and mayor that weeks later sought her support for the new homeless encampment ban (Joyce wrote a letter saying she was in favor of it, as long as the homeless people affected had a new home to go to).

Gordon is more blunt about his evaluations of politicians, claiming that he is too old to care about hurting anybody’s feelings. The few arguments the couple has are over politics, with Gordon being more fiscally conservative than his wife, but still, they never go to bed angry as the old advice goes. Both of them crack enough jokes for heavier discussions to end in laughter.

Glenn Summer admires their mutual optimism and good humor. He is thankful for the example they set in a rock-solid marriage which helped him pick a partner he could evolve with over the years. With his wife Bonnie, he has two daughters in Calabasas that are prized by their grandparents. One of his favorite recent memories with the family is when he and his parents joined Todd at a conference in Dallas when he was being given an industry honor. The family did not know anyone in the room but wanted to help Todd amid his advancement.

“My parents are social beasts,” exclaimed Glenn.

During a dinner, Joyce and Gordon worked the entire room, managing to meet everyone and talk up their son Todd. Glenn soon joined in and realized being social was not just who his parents are, but how they were spending their energy to make the event more memorable and special for Todd.

“They’re just easygoing, very honest and people react to that. They will meet somebody at a function and that person will become lifetime friends. It’s just incredible,” Todd said.

Many of those friends are now based in Downtown.

“San Diego’s fun. We’ve been having a lot of fun here,” Gordon said. “I’m happy being Mr. Joyce.”

For Joyce’s part, she often looks up at her husband with a smile, scolding him for ribald comments and checking to make sure he has enough coffee. As integral as she has become to the San Diego community, the care she shares with the world starts at home.

“Gordon’s a very kind person,” Joyce said. “He doesn’t get up in the morning unless we kiss each other. We kiss each other at night.”

May 11 marks 60 years they have loved and supported each other.