There were three of us there at Joe's passing the other day who were also present at his birth. On February 9, 1974, Joe was born at the University of Missouri Medical Center, a teaching hospital right across the street from Faurot Field, the stadium where the Longhorns play the Tigers once every few years now that the Big 8 is merged with the better half of the Southwest Conference. Joe's Mom Chris was a staff R.N. at the hospital. In the delivery room a crowd of maybe 15 people gathered to watch, there were student nurses, medical students, interns and residents. I was there too. And then Joe arrived, smiling, alert, with a thick head of dark hair that looked like it had just been professionally arranged. There was a nice round of applause for the new arrival, but no music. There should have been music. The Beatles' Abbey Road had been around for a few years in 1974, "Here Comes the Sun" would have been appropriate.
To understand Joe's early years, you need to understand the concept of the normal distribution, or bell curve, and that it often approximates a histogram of individuals when some attribute is measured, such as height or intelligence. Most of us rank somewhere near the middle, somewhere near the average. Well, in many ways Joe was somewhere way, way out on the right hand side of the bell curve. Was he one in a thousand? Maybe one in a million? Of course fathers are biased. But I remember the commotion Joe caused many times on the Mizzou campus, where he had a playpen in my graduate student office. I carried him around in a backpack baby carrier, and when I put him down to play with the people around him, the fun began. This walking, talking baby, not quite a toddler in size, had an amazing ability to chat up all of the best looking women around. Did I mention Joe was good looking? Baby Joe was the best babe magnet you could imagine. Great fun, but of course I was married.
Many will remember Joe for his razor sharp wit and sense of humor. I want to tell you that along with the early walking and talking, Joe "got" humor, saw irony and enjoyed good jokes at a very early age, he was a toddler who laughed a lot. Many of you know that Joe never lost his love for the toys, TV shows, movies and other memorabilia of his childhood. Joe's dear niece Indi has long recognized him as a kindred spirit, "like a child who never grew up". Dear Indi, it is difficult to think of a better compliment you could pay any adult. I hope you have some idea how much Joe loved you.
Joe did great in his childhood studies and participated in the usual sports leagues. He also seemed to tolerate the oil business moving game, going from Columbia, Missouri to Midland, Texas, to The Woodlands and then back to Midland, etc. ad infinitum. The moves weren't easy, but were easier than they might have been because of brother Tom, I can't imagine two brothers any closer than Joe and Tom. The four of us, parents and sons, enjoyed our lives and adventures together, we were a good team.
Joe was born into a large, closely knit and supportive extended family from St. Louis; we proudly traced our St. Louis history to a time before the civil war. This is a family that reminds me of the Krippels, Tom's in-laws from Houston - Tom is a lucky guy. Whenever Joe was in St. Louis, he was surrounded by doting aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and great grandparents. He was a very important person in our eyes, the first child in my family, the first grandchild for my parents, and the first great grandchild for Grandma Warmbrodt. He was born with Cardinal red blood flowing through his veins, and learned to love the St. Louis area through countless extended visits. But let the record show that Joe died wearing an Astros shirt.
Joe's grandparents adored him, and he returned it. Thankfully, both of my Dad's sisters are still around, and they will attest that my Dad's good looks skipped a generation and went to Joe, and if you compare their pictures you will see Joe and his grandpa were not just soul mates, but might have been twins!
I want the people who hear or read this to understand that the cancer that killed Joe didn't just pop up out of the blue, but is actually the culmination of a single disease process that started in his early teen years. A small percentage of the general population gets IBD (inflammatory bowel disease, either Crohn's Disease or Ulcerative Colitis), a small percentage of IBD victims get PSC (primary sclerosing cholangitis), and a relatively large percentage of PSC victims get a specific type of liver cancer. The PSC and liver cancer (cholangiocarcinoma) are relatively rare, and there is not much research money going in their direction. This should change.
As his father, I witnessed Joe stare down and defeat his illness during multiple bouts over parts of three decades. The first time doctors warned us that we would probably lose him was at age 14. Many of you remember that Jenn got a similar warning about a year ago, and Joe recovered to enjoy more great times with Jenn and so many of you. In the intervening years there were other serious crises, including the series of radical surgeries that Jenn nursed him through in the late 90's.
At this time of mourning Joe's death and celebrating his life, I have to say that Joe is the most courageous person I have ever met. It would be easy to lose count of the number of times he faced death and agreed to risky procedures that could improve the quality of life with his beloved Jennifer. In the course of a fierce 19 year battle, Joe kicked every challenger squarely in the butt, until the "Big C" came along. Although Mr. C won the final battle, I have to believe Joe left a few bruises on the enemy's posterior. You can face death on a battlefield, or face it repeatedly in a decades-long war with disease. Both situations require courage and sometimes produce heroes. Joe never flinched and fought every day until the very end. He is a hero in every sense of the word, he has been my hero for 33 years.
The last day of Joe's life had a lot of symmetry with the first day. Joe still had the thick dark hair that looked way too good given the circumstances. There were many onlookers, there was applause, but this time there was some very beautiful music. To paraphrase Mr. McCartney, Joe took a lot of love with him in death because he had given so much love to so many in life. Our spectacularly talented, intelligent and courageous husband, brother, son, uncle, nephew, cousin, brother-in-law, son-in-law and friend said his goodbyes and passed away peacefully. In the last few months of his life I told Joe over and over that I couldn't be any prouder of him. But as I watched Joe die, I realized that he had advanced another few notches on the Dad-pride-meter, something I didn't think possible. Goodbye, son. Well done.