Adios, Joe. You, too, Charles and Margaret

A friend e-mailed me at daybreak Saturday to say that Joe May had died some hours earlier after collapsing from an apparent heart attack. I hate those e-mails. Like I hate those phone calls.

I guess the general public was acquainted with Joe May as a Dallas School Board Trustee since 2002 who most recently stirred the community cauldron by advocating the Board’s consideration of employing undocumented educators to fill a void in the bi-lingual teaching ranks of the DISD.

Joe MayThat final proposal was just more of what those of us who knew Joe always came to expect of him: Thinking fresh, perhaps controversial thoughts, or what others call “thinking outside the box.” The mental wheels never stopped turning with him, and as agitated as some might become about this proposal or that, everyone I knew was always intrigued by and attentive to whichever of his thoughts were placed upon the table for our tasting. Whether you were for or against, no one ever wanted to get up and go home without hearing him out. They knew, as I did, that Joe could always justify his positions—positions he truly believed in. Although his appearance might have said otherwise, there was nothing pedestrian, quotidian or common about his mental capabilities.

Nor about his dedication and action, because Joe was not just a thinker and an advocate, he was an actor, too. A tireless one, I might add.

It was in the 1970’s when I met Joe May. I was a kid lawyer involved in employment law and he, if I recall, was an investigator for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency charged with the enforcement of most of our employment-related civil rights laws—those prohibiting, among other things, discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, sex and religion. Joe believed in his job—something I wish I could say about some of the people who hold that same job description today. Later he went to the Small Business Administration, where it seems he had been forever.

I don’t know when we first realized we shared a mutual interest in politics, but I know that we have been allies in countless political campaigns and efforts—with a couple of exceptions—for over two decades. We might quibble over the placement of a precinct here or there in one of Joe’s many proposed redistricting plans, which he was clever and superb at crafting, and yes, there were the nasty shots we took at each other, even publicly, over the placement of an Albertson’s grocery store in the center of our adjacent neighborhoods. But that was only two minutes out of a 24-hour day. And neither of us was much concerned about it, for those types of scratches quickly scab over and vanish. When it came to viewing the forest and not an occasional tree, I was always certain that I would be walking into one of his political meetings, or he would be walking into one of mine, to lend support.

I certainly didn’t know Joe as well as others did, but I knew him well and for a long time, and we shared many hours and causes, not to mention all the cigarettes and bebidas back in los días pasados.

There’s that emptiness we feel when someone well-intentioned and important to this community leaves not to return. Some of us miss those people even when we’ve made a lifetime of disagreeing with or fighting them, which was by no means my relationship with Joe. Even when they are controversial in the classic sense, we’d rather have them here than gone when put to the choice. That is because we are certain these people believed in something—had ideas—that they thought would benefit us all, and they were consistent and able in their efforts to support their beliefs in the social and political arenas. Those beliefs and actions were not mere fads or products of convenience.

So often these people take their leave without headlines or fanfare, unlike Joe. Thus, this Saturday morning was a particularly empty one for me when, after reading that e-mail about his death, I opened the ayem paper, as Carolyn Barta calls it, to see the obituary photograph of my friend Charles Timms, union Steelworker, former leader of the local chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, side-by-side veteran of countless Democratic campaigns, and much, much more. A persistent advocate for justice in general and voting rights in particular. A friend I and all of you will miss, whether you know it or not.

Then to the left there was the photo of Margaret Baillargeon, a Republican activist I had met only a few times in my many years here. Although I have fought her Party and its proposals all my life, no one can dispute the authenticity of her beliefs and actions, nor in any way impugn the legitimacy of her activism, even if one disagrees with its purpose. All three of these people were soldiers for our community. They all believed and knew why they believed. They had opinions they could back up, whether you liked those opinions or not. You just can’t say that about everybody these days, where opinions are a dime a dozen but their foundations are few.

Adios, Joe. You, too, Charles and Margaret.

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