JOE COLE OF MEACHAM PARK MISSOURI

REMEMBERING MR. JOE COLE Remembering Mr. Joe Cole is easy. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, we, isolated, young men and boys in Meacham Park , Missouri, a black, unincorporated community, outside St. Louis , were blessed to be loved and mentored by Mr. Joe Cole. We blacks were not reached yet by social recreational services available to our white male peers in adjoining Kirkwood, Missouri, in the final, fading days of segregation. Any opportunity to swim in a pool, ice skate on a rink, or to camp-out overnight were among those that were somehow furnished by Mr. Joe Cole to us, in the big, tattered, yellow school bus that he would used to ferry us about, afar from Meacham Park's insular confines. I moved away from Meacham Park at age 12, but before I left, I had learned to swim, partly to ice skate, and had been on my first camp out, courtesy of Mr. Joe Cole, a mentor. I thank God for this great man! who was husband, father, mentor, hero to many young men and boys, that otherwise would have lacked what he made available to us, diligently. https://www.google.com/…/joe-cole-kirkwood-humanitarian-die… http://www.kirkwoodpres.org/…/club-44-camp-brochure-2016.pdf