The Day Joe Hill Came to Stay
It is kindness in a person, not beauty, which wins our love.
Anonymous
It was a day of pink azaleas and white dogwoods in April, 1935 and Willie Ann "Babe" Hill lay dying. She needed to rest and couldn't. She worried about what would become of her nephew Joe.
this was the great Depression in Lincolnton, North Carolina, a town of 4.000 people in the segregated South, where everyone knew each other by face if not by name. Joe Hill was 15 years old, retarded and black. His Uncle Henry didn't have it in him to care for Joe and he knew of no one else to turn to in their community.
So Henry Hill went to Marvin and Mattie Leatherman, who lived in a white neighborhood off Main Street and had helped him before. Willie Ann used to clean the Leathermans' house and Joe sometimes mowed their lawn.
Marvin Titus Leatherman- "M. T." to colleagues- was a lawyer who would reach into his pockets to pay court fees for poor clients and who counseled against divorce. Mattie Leatherman was the neighborhood "angel of mercy," the mom who baked birthday cakes for the children of others, the neighbor who nursed the sick.
Henry pleaded with them. "Babe said she can't die until she finds somewhere to send Joe. She doesn't want him sent off to some institution where he won't have somebody to look after him."
Mattie reassured him. "You tell her to go in peace to the Lord. God has made a place for Joe, and he'll put him in it."
The next day, there was a knock on the Leathermans' door. Mattie peered past the sheer curtains and there stood Joe Hill. Beside him, a rusty metal cot.
Mattie hadn't meant she'd take him in. Yet there he stood. Marvin told his wife there was only one thing to do. If they didn't take him in, Joe might die.
They built a house out back, painted it white like the big house. Barely 9 by 20 feet, it had room for everything he needed. A bed, a dresser and a kerosene heater.
It was Joe Hill's house, and he was proud.
The Leathermans had one child of their own, Marguerite. Though Joe was 10 years older, he and Marguerite grew up together, opening presents on Christmas, blowing out birthday candles, and going for sunday drives with the family. Little Marguerite called her parents "Mama" and "Daddy" and Joe took to calling them that, too. He was like a child, and they taught him by example and affirmation.
Saturday nights, Marvin sat beside Joe and taught him the same Bible lessons he would teach the next morning at First Baptist Church. The rules of Society might not let Joe through the church door, but Marvin was determinded he would not suffer because of it.
Marvin tried to walk his life according to Matthew 25 -- "For I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in."
they settled into a routine that lasted more than 45 years. Promptly at 7:30 each weekday morning, Marvin strode off to his law office half a mile away. Here was the dean of Lincoln County lawyers, the former county attorney and state senator, cutting a distinguished figure down Main Street. Always a few paces behind, Joe Hill, struggling to keep up, smiling a big smile and flinging his right arm in greeting.
"Hello, M.T.!" neighbors called out. "Hello Joe!"
While Marvin worked in his second-floor law office, Joe went downstairs to Turner's clothing store or to the Western Auto. He'd sit in a chair for hours, dozing off if he sat too long, getting up to help if something needed lifting. As much as Marvin was fixture at the county courthouse, so was Joe on Main Street.
One brisk morning in January 1981, Marvin walked to his office with Joe close at his heels. Marvin set to work; Joe Hill began his rounds. Marvin then went to the local diner for his usual hamburger and cottage cheese. The waitress brought a cup of coffee. A few minutes later, she turned back. The cup was tipped over. Marvin could not speak. A stroke had silenced him. Marvin was bedridden, but Joe kept up his rounds alone for months.
One day when he got home from Clemons Barbershop on the evening of October 3, 1981, he opened the front door to find extra people in the house.
"He's gone," said Marvin's daughter, Marguerite Reid. Marvin had died from another stroke.
Joe hid in the kitchen, confused and disoriented. The next day, a neighbor found him sitting on the front steps, tears streaming down his cheeks, his eyes bloodshot.
"Daddy's gone," he said. "What am I going to do?"
The week after they buried Marvink, Joe moved into the big house with Mattie. He fixed her breakfast in the mornings, iced tea in the afternoons, and fried chicken on Sundays. She grew weaker with each passing year and the time finally came to move in with her daughter.
"I can't manage both of them," Marguerite told her husband, Dr. Leary Reid.
"Yes, we can," he said. "God will walk us through it... Joe Hill is part of our family. He has never known anything else. We can't turn our backs on him now."
They built him a little bedroom in their house, barely 8 feet by 10 feet. It had room for everything he needed: a bed, a dresser and a bulletin board for family pictures.
It was Joe's room, and he was happy.
A year and a half later, on December 30, 1991, Mattie died quietly in her sleep. she was 90 years old. Joe, 72.
"Mother's gone to be with Jesus," Marguerite told him. "But don't you worry. We'll take care of you."
And they did.
Elizabeth Leland
