I knew Joe for 20+ years. We met and got to know each other back in the 90’s through membership in CBMC (Christian Business Men’s Connection). Over the years, Joe, Eric Hoffer, Tony Ciaverelli and I would often meet for lunch – the last just a week before his passing -- and Joe, Tony and I made a few day trips north to the Bronx to tour Joe’s childhood neighborhood around Arthur Avenue, eat a giant lunch, then shop at the incredible bakeries and cheese shops and other unique food markets that are typical in the Bronx.
Joe was a very gregarious and talkative fellow – always positive, never a complainer. He would tell us about his Lockheed Martin charitable activities, volunteering at the Montgomery County Foundation, friends, and especially his family that he loved so dearly. Very importantly, you rarely heard the word “I” – mostly “we and us and them” – never promoting his “own brand” (something that the popular culture stresses that we must do nowadays), but focusing on other people as more important than himself.
Maybe most importantly – at least to me – is all that Lynn and Christine and others wrote and posted about Joe on this “Forever missed” website. I’ve read and studied the obituary and stories and photos on the four tabsheets: “About”, “Life”, Gallery” and “Stories”. Thank you all for preparing and posting all of this wonderful stuff. Now I gratefully realize how relatively little I really knew about our Joe -- gregarious and talkative but not a self-promoter. I am in awe of this wonderful man who knew and loved Jesus Christ. Most of all, I am both challenged and greatly humbled by his story. And, I am admittedly (forgive me), somewhat jealous of all that he was and how he lived his faith.