Joe and I had a fine rural Virginia childhood. Together we hunted, fished, swam, and camped. As a family we motored to Key West when Joe was nine and I was six. Joe and I got along, but fought a lot. Much smaller, I was often forced to threaten him with whatever weapon was handy, which he would usually laughingly wrest from me. Once though, at an early age, I was successful in winging a claw hammer at the back of his head when he ran away with my cap gun, and I sometimes wonder whether it had lasting effects.
We spent great times at our cabin at the confluence of the Rappahannock River with the Chesapeake. We spent endless hours fishing and gleefully shooting the gonads out of stinging nettles with our slingshots. Nettles were the bane of our time on the Chesapeake, since the fear of their sting kept us out of the water on hot days, and those small figure eight patterns on their tops (reproductive structures) made excellent targets.
Our family foundered with the demise and death of our father during our teens, and despite the fact that no one in our family had attended college, Joe always saw that in his future. Thin and frail until his early teens, he was a big and successful kid in high school. He was also very earnest and studious; by winning a local radio station ‘quiz show’ scholarship he was able to attend the University of Richmond for one year. He then spent a year working as a chemist in the local paper mill, followed by two years at Danville Technical Institute studying for an Associate’s degree in electronics. He ran for class president at DTI—swept to victory with his “Soukup smokes your brand” campaign.
Meanwhile I had graduated from the University of Richmond with plans of becoming an oceanographer. Joe thought that more interesting than being an electronics technician, and was inspired to further his education. He went back and excelled at U. of R. in physiology. With accolades he was then off to Duke University. I believe graduate school in the late sixties changed him substantially. No longer a ‘thin tie and pocket protector’ kind of guy, he became wise in the ways of the world and, I thought, a bit cynical. He was becoming increasingly unconventional while I was becoming more conventional.
We stayed in contact mainly through Mom and on holidays, but began to reconnect through his visit to our home in Homestead, Florida where I was working for Everglades National Park in the nineties. He saw Florida with new eyes, soon bought a house, and Florida increasingly became his focus. He hated the cold and we had little luck enticing him to visit us in Massachusetts. Since our move to Maine in recent years coincided with his illness, we had little hope that he would brave the cold to travel here.
I always felt that Joe and I had an unbreakable bond unaffected by time, untroubled by distance. We never spoke of it, and I certainly don’t remember much hugging. I do remember uninterrupted confidence that my big brother could be counted on. More than once he intervened with laser-like insight and rock-solid advice when I needed it; I always got a kick out of his brand of humor and his sense of social parody.
Joe has been described by others as an original. That is surely true. I miss his powerful presence in my life.
