Business Magnate. Founder of Hallmark Cards. Born in David City, Nebraska, son of George Nelson Hall and Nancy Dudley Houston Hall, he was named Joyce after a Methodist minister who visited their town. His family was very poor, and he worked odd jobs, mostly involving sales, from age 8 on to supplement the meager income of his father. When he was 16, Joyce and his two older brothers, Rollie and William, pooled their money and opened the Norfolk Post Card Company. But the market for imported post cards was limited, and the new business hung on by a slender thread. In January 1910, at the age of 18, he dropped out of high school over the objections of his family, crammed two shoeboxes full of postcards and boarded a train for Kansas City. He sold his cards to drugstores, bookstores and gift shops. This was the start of what was to be the largest greeting card company in the world. He coined the phrase "When you care enough to send the very best." During his life, he never lost his plain-spoken, common sense, man-of-the-plains touch, despite being: Commander of the Order of the British Empire; holder of the French Legion of Honor; winner of the Eisenhower Medallion; first-name intimate of Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman; winner of the first Emmy ever awarded to a television sponsor; recipient of plaques, scrolls and honorary degrees and the Horatio Alger Award. He married his wife, Elizabeth, in 1921, had three children: Elizabeth Ann Reid, Barbara Louise Marshall, and Donald Joyce Hall, who is chairman of the company his father founded. His grandson, Donald J. Hall Jr., is now president and CEO. "JC" retired in 1966 and spent his retirement in efforts to revitalize the Kansas City downtown area. One of the results was Crown Center, a combination business/shopping district surrounding the Hallmark corporate headquarters. Mr. Hall died in 1982 at his home in Leawood, Kansas - a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri at the age of 91.