Learned tonight that a lifelong friend of our family has passed away. Joe was at every get-together (Christmas, Easter, Birthdays, etc.) we had on Mom's side for as long as I can remember. In addition to his job working for the highway road crew, Joe also labored on the farm and milked cows for my Aunt Pearl & Cousin Charles Lee. He mowed the yard for my great-grandmother, Bessie Ashbaugh (Granny), Aunt Pearl's sister, for decades. He would fix things around the house for her, never taking a dime, though she offered to pay him many times. Joe brought Granny Kentucky Fried Chicken every Saturday. Whenever Granny cooked, she always cooked enough for him. He brought her mail in every day and would fuss at her when she got it herself. He often took Granny and Aunt Pearl to the beauty parlor and grocery store in what must have appeared to outsiders as a modern-day Driving Miss Daisy arrangement. He usually drove a Cadillac because that was his favorite car. Joe could frequently be found hanging around High Grove Grocery because of his love of people. He would carry grocery bags for folks, calling them by name. He used to give my little sister quarters just because he knew she hated holding change (the germs freaked her out). He would regularly sit out in the barn with my cousin & a group of men that would gather around from the different farms & shoot the breeze. I called them the world-problem solvers. Watching him try to work an iPhone he purchased a couple of years back was an experience as I attempted to show him how to use it. He was always amazed when someone showed him or told him something new. He just had a natural curiosity about him, coupled with a generous spirit. His surname was Goldring, but it might as well have been Goldheart. Though not related to any of us genetically or by marriage, he was as much a part of our family as anyone. In fact, Granny’s children, Betty & Patsy (my grandmother and aunt), referred to him as “brother." Granny often remarked that Joe was as good to her as a son would have been. In a world often torn apart by racial & ethnic divisions, Joe's love for us and ours for him represented what humanity can be, what the Apostle Paul describes in Galatians 3:28: there is neither black nor white, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, but you are all one in Christ Jesus. I can't imagine not having you around in this life. Rest in peace, my friend.
