Joan Riley Boyle died Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015.

A memorial gathering was held at Salem Funerals and Cremations in Winston-Salem at 3 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 7, with a private service at Memorial Park Cemetery in Skokie, Ill.

She was born in Port Arthur, Texas, Feb. 26, 1927, the daughter of the late Glen Edward Riley and Helen Wight Riley. As a child, she attended the Notre Dame de Sion School of Kansas City before the family moved to Kenilworth, Ill. She later graduated from Bennett Junior College in Millbrook, NY. As a young adult, she was a trophy-magnet, as an award-winning skeet shooter and competed in high performance sports car road rally races. She established a decoupage school in her late husband Walter D.L. Boyle,Sr’s chain of stores in the Chicago area and later became prolific in her own personal arts and crafts endeavors. She and Walter moved from Northbrook to North Carolina in 1974 to become among the earliest member-residents of Bermuda Run. She was a golfer and became a dedicated volunteer at the Crosby Golf Tournament where, for five years, she hosted and befriended basketball giant Michael Jordan in their home. He fondly called her “Mrs. B”. As a five-day-a-week volunteer at Wake Forest Baptist Hospital, she and her late husband became major benefactors to the institution, creating the Walter D.L. Boyle Sr. and Joan Riley Boyle Professorship in the Section on Gastroenterology in the Department of Internal Medicine, in honor of their friend John H. Gilliam, MD. They were later inducted into The Coy C. Carpenter Society of Wake Forest School of Medicine. She was an active member of the Winston-Salem Belk Senior Board and was a founding member of the Piedmont Club in Winston-Salem.

She was originally married to the late Carl Buehler III of Palatine, Ill. and had 3 sons.

On the Fourth of July in 1965, she married Walter Douglas Long Boyle Sr. of Kenilworth, whom she had dated when they were teens. He had four children from a previous marriage. During her 41 years as a North Carolinian, she and Walter Sr. counted downtown Charlotte as home for a dozen years.

Survivors: her brother, Thomas Wight Riley of Phoenix; sons, Marty Buehler of Hinsdale, Ill., Carl Buehler IV of Palatine, Ill. and Jay Buehler of Whitefish Bay, Wisc.; stepsons, Harold Lauren Boyle II of Belews Creek, Douglas Kane Boyle of Walkertown, Walter D.L. Boyle Jr. of Roanoke, Va.; and her stepdaughter, Janna Cecile Greenwell of Melbourne, Fla.; grandchildren, Morgan Buehler, Carl Michael Buehler, Martin Buehler Jr. Grace Riley Buehler, Claire Buehler, Lauren Ashley Boyle, Addison Riley Boyle Greenwell; great-granddaughter, Jeleh Lauren Yazdani; nieces Jami-Ross Wilkerson Avent of Winston-Salem, Lisa Girouard of Shrewbury, Mass.; nephew Dewey Guy Wilkerson of Winston-Salem; and brother-in-law, John William Robert Boyle of Phoenix.

Mrs. Boyle was preceded in death by: her husband, Walter D.L. Boyle Sr.; brother, the Rev. Glen Edward Riley Jr. of Chicago; nephew, John Boyle Wilkerson of Winston-Salem; and sister-in-law, Anne Cecile Wilkerson Fain of Winston-Salem.

Memorials: Hospice/Palliative Care Center, 101 Hospice Lane, Winston-Salem, 27103; www.hospicecarecenter.org.

Condolences: www.salemfh.com.