Mary J. Sturm, a homemaker and lifelong athlete, died Friday of heart failure at the Blakehurst retirement community in Towson. She was 82.
The daughter of Charles E. Kimmel, founder in the 1920s of the Kimmel Tire Co., and Mildred R. Kimmel, a homemaker, Mary Joyce Kimmel was born in Baltimore and raised on Newland Road in Guilford.
Mrs. Sturm, who never used her first name and was known as Joyce, attended the Cathedral School, Notre Dame Preparatory School and graduated in 1951 from Maryvale Preparatory School. She earned an associate's degree in 1953 from what was then Villa Julie College.
In 1955, she married William G. Sturm, who later became a salesman with DePuy Orthopaedics. The couple were 30-year residents of Valley Lane in Towson, before moving in 1993 to a home in Timonium. They moved to Blakehurst in 2013.
Mrs. Sturm was a tennis player all of her life and a member of the Baltimore Country Club and Homeland Racquet Club. She played bridge with the same fervor, family members said.
She was also a world traveler. She and her husband owned a second home in Sea Pines Plantation in Hilton Head Island, S.C., where they enjoyed spending more than 30 winters.
"She had a fantastic sense of humor that all who knew her enjoyed," said her daughter, Kim Sturm Kozak of Millers in Carroll County. "She was gregarious, kind and fun to be with. Few had a life as blessed and fortunate as she."
Mrs. Sturm was a former longtime communicant of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and in recent years of Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Towson.
A funeral Mass will be offered at 10 a.m Thursday at her church, Baltimore and Ware avenues, Towson.
In addition to her husband of 60 years and her daughter, Mrs. Sturm is survived by two sons, William G. Sturm Jr. of Hilton Head, S.C., and Larry Sturm of Towson; two brothers, Frank Kimmel of Towson and Charles Kimmel of Vermont; and six grandchildren.