I have known Joe for almost 40 years and can remember the very first time I met him. It was just after Labor Day Sept 1971 in Athens Ohio. It was one of those beautiful autumn days, that to this day, always bring a smile to my face when I think of those times. I was being dropped off at Ohio University by my parents and unloading boxes to go up to my new home on the 2nd floor of Washington Hall, worrying about leaving behind all that I had known and wondering if I will fit in. 2 boys, who were sitting on the steps watching, came over and offered to help carry some boxes. One guy had a red afro and I was wondering gee white people have afros? And the other guy was wearing a purple and white basketball shirt that simply said M.F.H.S. Well its 1971 and it was a time of protest, but Mother F....r High School? Turns out those 2 boys were Bill Laverty and Joe Lampert who actually went to Martins Ferry high school. He said he was from the Ohio Valley and that they make a lot of steel there. Yeah well I never heard of Martins Ferry. I said I was from Youngstown, and it was known as the Steel Valley and we made a lot of steel there as well. To which Joe replied, well you ever heard of Lou Groza? A fellow Browns Fan, are you kidding me? It was only just last year that he casually mentioned that his mother had graduated with Groza while we watched the Browns draft on ESPN. That was Joe, always with little tidbits of facts way before there was Google or a Wikipedia. And so began a lifelong friendship with a man I have only known as Brother Joe.
He will tell you that I encouraged him to have a positive attitude when dealing with difficulties and I will tell you he taught me to look at the world in a different way, to appreciate music, and taught me to write down in words what I thought. That was one of Joe’s greatest gifts, his ability to get people to talk about themselves, listening with genuine interest and being able to recount those stories years later down to the last detail. Joe was insatiably curious about the world around him which led to 4 years of some of the greatest adventures I have ever had and I am eternally grateful it was Brother Joe that I shared those adventures with.
There is not nearly enough space for those adventures except to say it was really, really fun. The plateau, tooling in his Plymouth Duster, Old Man Caves, art park, turning 21 and almost dying from a Tequila overdose, ( Joe said he saved my life after 21 shots of Tequila by placing me face down in my bed so I wouldn’t choke on my vomit). The next morning he offered me a cold Rolling Rock to cure my hangover. I think maybe it was really 3 days later before I could actually get out of bed. We climbed to the top of Washington Hall through the clock tower quoting a famous mountaineer who scaled Mt Everest, “because it is there.” It was George Mallory not Sir Edmund Hillary because Joe always taught me to check my facts. It did not matter where we went because it was always fun when Joe wanted to go exploring. Road trips to the greatest concert we never saw, George Harrison, on account it was snowed out, only to end up at Brother Bill’s farm for a crazy weekend. Joe would say, “Can’t let a good party go to waste.”
We graduated in 1975 and we went our own ways and lived our lives. We kept in touch and saw each other over the years, always too infrequently but enough to know he was happy and very much loved by his wife Bridget and 2 children, Ambrosia and Abe. His greatest ambition was always to write his novel. I think he saw himself as Hunter Thompson, at least I think his writing style was influenced by Thompson if not his life itself.
It was never Joe’s intent to get sick, as Lennon once wrote, “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.”
His fight against the ravages of glioblastoma multiforme, a form of brain cancer or tumor in the brain defied all medical odds. Most people don’t survive 6-9 months, a year at the most. Joe fought with dignity for 7.5 years and really is a case study on how to deal with cancer in any form. “he once said to me, “I can’t give up, I won’t give up I will beat this thing.”
Shortly after his diagnosis, he suffered a stroke causing him to lose the ability to read, write and speak. Yet he taught himself to spell, to write letters of the alphabet, to write words and sentences and to eventually write and speak again. He did so because he believed he could and let that be his legacy. He so badly wanted to leave his mark in this world and I think he very much did.
Art Buchwald, writing for the Washington Post once remarked, the question is not where we go when we die. Rather, what are we doing here in the first place?” He was here to bring love to a beautiful woman. He was here to create 2 wonderful children. He was here to be a great brother and a true friend. And he was here to prove that not matter what the odds are, we all have the power to overcome life’s most difficult struggles.
I also think I know what happens when people like Brother Joe leave. I shared this story with Joe after my Mom died and he wrote back and said how much he enjoyed it.
My mom grew up in the produce business in Beaver Valley Pa and was always eating fresh fruit. One day she slices open a grapefruit and discovers one of the seeds inside had a small sprout. She placed the seed in a small container and the seed quickly became a sapling. After, a couple of months and a few re-pots, she now has a small size tree growing on her patio. One day, she tells my brother, “take this tree and plant it in your yard, as it may bear fruit one day.” That was over 15 years ago. Today you can drive by David’s house and see this enormous grapefruit tree that has over 400 grapefruits on it!
I tell this story because it really does not matter if you believe in religion or who your God is. I believe the Human race was planted here as the Tree of Life. And every now and then, that Tree produces a very special person, like Joe Lampert. And now that Brother Joe is no longer physically here, he remains in our hearts and is now sprouting another tree somewhere in our Universe.
“Brother Jay” Bernstein 3/16/2011
