Joseph Charles Feucht (Joe Feucht) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on April 16, 1918. In many ways his life is very much intertwined with the last 92 years of history and change in Cincinnati and Ohio.

Joe started life as part of the German and Irish immigrant communities that played a significant role in shaping the history of Cincinnati in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His family was unique in having a tie to both of those immigrant communities. In 1908, a recent immigrant from Germany (Frederick Feucht -- Fred) married another recent immigrant (Elnora Larkin --Nora) who came on her own to the U.S. at age 18 from County Mayo, Ireland. It is hard to know how these two individuals from two very different places with language and cultural difference found one another. But, Fred and Nora did find one another, and they remained remarkably devoted to one another for over 55 years.

Fred earned a modest but reliable living as a master baker (family stories attribute the development of some of Cincinnati’s special rye breads to him – I have no idea if that it true, but he took great pride in doing his work well, and he did make a very exceptional rye). Nora raised their five children (Fred Jr., August, Alice, Mary and Joe – the youngest) and took care of the occasional stray cousin or neighborhood child in need.

Fred and Nora lived most of their married lives and raised their children in a three-room apartment on the ground flour of a four-apartment house in the Fairmount neighborhood of Cincinnati. Rather than moving to the growing suburbs in their later years, Fred bought the four-apartment house, and he and Nora stayed in that same three-room apartment. Nora continued to cook meals for a small army, ready for any of their adult children and their growing families, or various neighbors who dropped in for dinner.

Joe, along with his brothers and sisters, went to Saint Bonaventure School in Fairmount. And while they never went hungry, finances were tight (and tighter still during the Depression years). Joe wore hand-me-down clothes and canvas shoes. Like many immigrant children in Cincinnati, Joe had a happy childhood in a very family-focused home environment, but he also was aware that his parents were not really able to help him navigate the larger world of life in the United States. While immigrants form the foundation of much that is America, for the first generation of two, they are also outsiders living, in many ways, on the margins of the established communities. Joe was aware of this outsider status, and it shaped his wish to become an insider.

Joe was athletic from his earliest days. He became a fan of baseball. He loved to play and was good at it. He likely would have thrived in a career tied to sports in general and baseball in particular. It was clear from the joy he took in teaching his children the fine art of baseball that he would have found being a high school baseball coach and teacher to be an ideal career. But, neither his parents nor anyone in his neighborhood were knowledgeable enough about finding and creating career pathways in the United States to talk to him about such options. So his working life took on a different character – more driven by the options available than by his inclinations and talents. This is quite typical of the children of middle and lower income families (particularly immigrant families) in the early 20th century in Cincinnati.

Much of Joe’s path in life seemed to be shaped more by chance than choice – shaped by the uncontrollable forces of things like war and the world economy. Joe lived through the Great Depression, and his family -- along with all others -- struggled. But Fred’s notion that being a baker was a good job -- because regardless of the economy, people needed bread -- proved to be true, and he worked through the Great Depression – often for much less pay. And, as Joe would recount, Fred as an employee was subject to the dictates of his employers – working hours, pay levels, working conditions, and even for whom to vote. For Joe, it wasn’t just a matter of low income; it was also the signs posted on many businesses early in the 20th century letting it be known that Irish and Catholics need not apply.

Down the street from the Feucht family in Fairmount was the Schroeder family – William Schroeder and his wife Florence Nuber Schroeder, and their three daughters Dorothy (Dot), Virginia (Jin), and Kathleen (Kit). Jin was about three years younger than Joe, and Joe served as big brother for Dot, Jin, and Kit after the families got to know one another. William drove a horse-drawn beer truck for a living, and Florence worked as a tailor’s assistant.

The Great Depression was particularly hard on them, but the stories told after the fact by Dot, Jin, and Kit were also stories of the joy of one another’s company and the difficult but shared struggle to find a way through the hard years. As Jin and Joe reached the end of their teenage years, their relationship shifted, and Jin became Joe’s girl.

The combination of growing up in a low income immigrant family and surviving the Great Depression made Joe eager to start working early and earn the money needed to buy clothes of his own. He finished high school and started working in a variety of jobs – including as a paperboy and a ditch digger for the Cincinnati Gas Company. There is a grand picture of him with his first new car and dapper 1940’s era clothes. He took a job with a chemical company in Cincinnati right before the start of World War II, and his potential led the company to encourage Joe to start taking college courses in chemistry.

Although Joe’s job in the chemical company was considered a war-related role and gave him a deferment from the draft, he enlisted in World War II in September 1943, and after basic training was assigned to the Army -- 16th Armored Division, 36th Battalion. It was a tank division, and Joe became a tank gunner.

While Fred Feucht’s stories about life in Germany were not all positive, he did tell Joe about his relatives in Germany and Fred’s life as a child living near Baden-Baden, Germany. Joe’s first visit to Germany was in a tank.

He spoke little over the years about his time in World War II except with others who were also in service during that war. But, during the end of his time in Germany, he was with those who helped with the liberation of Buchenwald. It was clear over the years that the experience left a lasting mark on him and created an ongoing struggle to reconcile what he wanted to believe was the good in humankind from the atrocities he saw. He was scheduled to be shipped out to the war in the Pacific when the dropping of the atomic bombs ended World War II.

He married Jin as he stopped in Cincinnati between his time in Germany and his planned deployment to the Pacific in 1945. When he returned to Cincinnati in 1946 after his discharge, he and Jin started J&J Doughnut Company. They worked nights creating the doughnuts and other baked goods and then sold them in the bakery story each morning.

They had their first daughter in 1951 (Joyce) and the second (Mary Jo) in 1963. They were among those who contributed to the changes in Cincinnati following World War II with the baby boom and the growth of the suburbs around Cincinnati. Joe and Jin bought their first new home in White Oak in the mid-1950’s.

Joe left the doughnut business in 1961 and joined many others looking for entrepreneurial options in the growing and changing economy and culture of the 1960’s. He sold mutual funds and insurance for a number of years for the Eagles National Life Company and United Liberty Life. He gave that up to enter the restaurant business in the early 1970’s. He owned Tee’s Restaurant in Middletown, Ohio for a number of years and then invested in smorgasbord restaurants in Milford and in Gatlinburg, Tennessee with others. He liked to work, to pitch in, to talk to customers and help staff. He liked to make a difference with his work more than managing from a distance. His instincts for a good investment were mixed – he would often tell a story about coming back from World War II and talking with childhood friend Vinny, who said he was going into the pizza business. Joe had never heard of pizza, so Vinny made him one. Joe’s firm conclusion was that “it would never sell.” Vinny went on to found the Pasquale’s Pizza chain that was popular in Cincinnati for many years.

Throughout his life, Joe seemed to need to believe that there were “good guys” and “bad guys” in some pure form. His experience before and during World War II no doubt made it clear that humankind was capable of great cruelty on a simple, close-to-home scale and on a scale of extreme horror big enough to take and hold the center of the world stage. But regardless, Joe still wanted to believe there were identifiable and reliable good guys and bad.

But, that is a difficult notion to hold on to. For awhile, unions were an unquestionable good, given his father’s working experience, until Joe in his doughnut business was told by union leads at various factories in the region that he could not sell his doughnuts via vending machines he had bought and placed in the factories (and traveled around to fill with fresh doughnuts every day) unless he paid the union. Then, unions shifted for him from an unquestioned good to something quite different. Joe never believed that anyone he knew – who was standing in front of him talking to him like a regular person – could be one of the “bad guys.” I suppose one could call him naive and point out what misplaced trust cost him in his working life, but for Joe, I believe, bigger things were at issue. Much in his view of the world would crumble if your own “team” could become the bad guys.

Joe’s world was shaped and colored by a belief in a black and white world – one that had clear heroes and villains – and his lifelong quest was to put people and groups into one of those categories. Difference of world views across generations are part of what drives the changes we see over time in places like Cincinnati. But, these different views often have a common foundation. Between Joe and his daughter that foundation is a belief that we can do better, that good people (or flawed people who choose to do good) can make a remarkable difference in the lives of others and in the world. Such common foundations also give places like Cincinnati an abiding core of continuity, aspiration and hope.

Joe’s oldest daughter, Joyce, surprised him and Jin by deciding to go off to college and then graduate school. She is now a dean at a university in California and is married to an artist. Near her death, Jin, though pleased with the achievements and independence of her oldest daughter, could not figure out how she, a rather shy person, managed to raise someone who though nothing of traveling around the country or the globe, taking on new jobs in new places. But I would imagine that is true for many of the era of Joe and Jin, who watched their children grow up in a changing world and were often unable to help their children navigate that new reality (much a Joe’s parents could not help him navigate the new country to which they had immigrated).

His youngest daughter (Mary Jo) lives just outside of Cincinnati (the further growth of the suburbs). She, too, went to college but in Cincinnati (top of her graduating class in business), and she and her husband (an engineer) are on hand with Joe as his days slide by. In her own way, she is a departure from what Joe and Jin might have expected but she is also has become the brave (in my view, the truly brave go on not without fear or struggle but despite them) and resourceful daughter Joe needs with him in these final months of his life. She, too, is compiling a set of experiences and memories that track life in Ohio and in Cincinnati into the 20th century.

Jin died about 11 years ago.

Joe’s 90th birthday party was attended by about 80 people, and that was only the first tier of his now sprawling extended family (both the Feucht’s and the Schroeder’s -- the children of brothers and sisters, cousins, and on and on over time add up). Joe has always been a family favorite – a beloved son, a favorite uncle (and great uncle) for many, a cherished brother (particularly to his sisters) and brother-in-law, a good and helpful neighbor, and a friend who laughed easily and enjoyed hours spend in congenial conversation across the years.

He was in surprisingly good health and looking much younger than his years until he approached his 91st year. Then, health problems began to surface starting with arrhythmia and low blood pressure.

Joe is not yet dead (nor is he the oldest in his family – his older brother August remains alive and out). Joe is 92, and he was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form or lung cancer that has spread to the liver, so his remaining days are few. But as I write this, he is alert, alive, weaker than he prefers but not in great pain, and grappling with the many issues that come with one’s impending end.

I know that if one could map his life and all the connections with others Joe has had over 92 years in Cincinnati, the stories of each of those lives would paint a vivid picture of life in Cincinnati in the 20th century and, to a large extent, the picture of life in the United States leading from the end of the 19th century to the opening decade of the 21st century. When he does leave this planet in the not too distant future, he will take with him irreplaceable memories and a singularly Joe worldview. Often, when I read about another’s life in the paper, it is too late say anything at all – to ask questions or to share any memories that seem to intersect. With that in mind, I am writing a premature (not by much – or so his doctors say) obituary.

I should note that Joe’s particular business instincts have been consistent to the end – the funeral home he picked out to reliably serve his final needs has gone out of business. Somehow that makes me smile.

Joe can, for the moment, be reached at Joseph Feucht, P.O. Box 18596, Fairfield, Ohio, 45014, or email CincinnatiJoe42@gmail.com