TOMBSTONE TUESDAY: Joseph Paul Petrisky

TOMBSTONE TUESDAY: Joseph Paul Petrisky was born Yozeph Petricska on December 5, 1913, in Nagy Luchka, a village then located in the northeastern region of Austria-Hungary (an area that, after the First World War, became part of Czechoslovakia and later Ukraine). He was born to Yozeph and Elona (Zubaka) Petricska. Several months before his birth, his father—trained as a blacksmith—had left for America to join his older brother Mike in Chicago. Like many emigrants leaving Europe during the early 20th century, he intended to find work, save money, and later send for his wife and child.

With her husband abroad, Elona moved back into her parents’ home. The Zubaka family was notably educated: Elona’s father was a school professor, her mother a doctor—remarkably uncommon for women in the early 1900s—and her two brothers served as officers in the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces. Elona herself had studied nursing.

Tragically, Elona fell ill and died while Yozeph was still very young. Soon after, as World War I neared its end, the region plunged into chaos. In 1918, revolutionary movements swept across Central and Eastern Europe as the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed. Political tensions and reprisals were common, and in this climate Grandfather Zubaka was arrested and executed for political reasons—a fate that befell many community leaders during the upheaval.

Now widowed and grieving, Grandmother Zubaka became the sole guardian of young Yozeph, who had begun answering to “Yosh Zubaka”. In his later autobiography, Joseph remembered his grandmother’s bravery, recounting how she would hide him under a small space beneath the floor whenever soldiers came searching for him. Food was scarce, law and order crumbled, and armed factions frequently moved through the countryside. Many children in this region were left orphaned or displaced during and immediately after the war.

One winter evening, Grandmother Zubaka had not returned by nightfall and an elderly woman came to the house, and told Yosh to come with her - that she would take care of him until his grandmother returned. But the next morning, the woman was gone. Lost and frightened, Yosh wandered out in search of anything familiar to find his way home. He encountered a thirteen-year-old boy traveling with a group of younger children who hid in barns and abandoned buildings to escape soldiers and hostile adults. This was not uncommon: after the war, groups of “street children” or refugee orphans roamed parts of Eastern Europe, surviving through scavenging, begging, and mutual protection. Yosh joined them, living in constant fear and learning not to trust adults—even those who claimed to want to help.

Meanwhile in Sabraton, West Virginia, Yozeph’s father, now called Joseph, learned of his wife’s death and the uncertain fate of his son. Overwhelmed with grief, he was introduced—through a cousin of Elona’s—to Mary, a young widow of Czechoslovakian heritage who spoke the Solval (Slovak) language, with the hopes of improving the widower's spirits. Joseph and Mary married in early 1920, but Joseph remained tormented by the possibility that his son might still be alive.

It was decided that Joseph’s older brother, Mike, now a U.S. citizen, would return to Hungary to search for the boy. When Mike arrived in Nagy Luchka in the fall of 1920, he found Grandmother Zubaka still living in her home. She told him that Yosh had been missing for over a year, but she believed he was still alive surviving among the wandering children. She provided two identifying details: two vaccination scars on his left upper arm and webbed toes, which she hoped would help locate him.

Mike joined a horseback patrol searching for groups of refugee children in the countryside. Miraculously, they found young Yozeph hiding alone in a barn. The local police summoned two women to bathe him, and although he attempted to flee, the distinctive vaccination scars and webbed toes confirmed his identity.  Mike reunited the boy with his grandmother, who, though heartbroken, agreed it was best for him to go to America to live with his father. She packed a small wicker suitcase with his few treasured belongings. But before they could leave the country, government officials required Mike to legally attest that he was the boy’s father, not merely his uncle. Yosh was determined that when asked, he would deny that Mike was his father and then be able to remain with his grandmother. But the magistrate posed no questions to Yozeph and the documents were approved as submitted.

On their final walk to the train station, Grandmother Zubaka carried the wicker basket while Mike had tied a rope from his waist to the child’s wrist to keep him from running away. She kissed her grandson and urged him to be a good boy, to obey Uncle Mike, and promised she would come to America when she could. That was the last time Yozeph saw his grandmother.  It was November 1920, a time when Europe was still reeling from war, revolution, famine, and shifting borders.

Yozeph and Uncle Mike traveled by train for three days and two nights to Antwerp, Belgium, one of the major European departure ports for immigrants at the time. There, they boarded the Red Star Line’s S.S. Finland, joining thousands of others making the uncertain but hopeful journey to New York and a new life in America. Aboard the S.S. Finland, young Yozeph enjoyed a rare sense of freedom. Uncle Mike, either busy talking with other immigrants or bedridden with seasickness in their cabin, didn’t always keep a close watch on him. For a child who had grown up in hardship and constant vigilance, the ship felt like a vast, floating world waiting to be explored.

One day, he slipped away and climbed a stairwell to the next deck, where he found passengers dressed in their “Sunday best.” These were likely second- and first-class travelers, separated from steerage immigrants by strict class divisions common on early 20th-century ocean liners. As he looked upward, he noticed birds gliding overhead—but their wings didn’t flap. Having only seen land birds beating their wings to stay aloft, he didn’t yet understand that these were seabirds gliding on the wind, a detail he later recalled with amusement.

He climbed another flight and reached a deck lined with lifeboats, stacked neatly on each side. Three tall smokestacks rose above him, belching dark smoke—the ship’s coal-fired engines working steadily below. Still curious, he climbed one more set of stairs and pushed through a door, finding himself in the wheelhouse. A man stood at the ship’s wheel, guiding the massive vessel across the Atlantic. From this height, Yozeph could see the entire ship beneath him, and the endless ocean beyond. He was enjoying himself immensely until a bearded crewman spotted him. The man promptly escorted him back to Uncle Mike, sternly reminding them that immigrants were required to stay in designated areas—a common enforcement on ships bringing thousands of passengers to America.

His curiosity, however, was not easily extinguished. The next day, he discovered a normally locked door left ajar and wandered downward into the lower parts of the ship. He began climbing down a ladder toward what he later learned was the engine room, the industrial heart of the ship where enormous steam engines roared. Halfway down, the metal rungs grew so hot—from heat radiating from the boilers—that he panicked and froze. A crew member rescued him, carrying him all the way to the bottom. After a uniformed officer scolded the men for allowing the child near such a dangerous place, Yozeph was delivered once again to Uncle Mike, shaken but unharmed.

Several days later, while standing on deck early in the morning, he heard excited shouts from the crowd: “There it is! There it is! I can see it ahead—the statue!”

Passengers surged forward, all eager for their first glimpse of America. Uncle Mike lifted Yozeph onto his shoulders. There, rising above the horizon, was the Statue of Liberty, the symbolic gateway to the United States. Millions of immigrants of that era described this moment as life-changing, a promise of freedom after years of war, poverty, or upheaval. In his autobiography, Joseph remembered: “I could see the statue above the heads of the crowd of people. It didn’t mean much to me at the time, but I learned to love it and the country it represented.”

When the S.S. Finland docked at the busy New York wharf, the steerage immigrants were ferried to Ellis Island. Inside the great hall, Yozeph and Uncle Mike joined one of three long lines where doctors conducted quick medical inspections meant to identify any visible illnesses. Children, especially those traveling without their mothers, often received additional scrutiny.

Yozeph was taken to an all-white examination room and given a gown. At only seven years old and unable to speak English, he was frightened. Uncle Mike tried to reassure him, explaining that all immigrant children had to complete these procedures before they could be admitted to America. Yozeph remained on Ellis Island for ten days for observation or quarantine—a common requirement for children at the time. The stay wasn’t entirely bleak. He found other children to play with, and for the first time in years, he was in a place where adults looked after his well-being. At the end of the ten days, Uncle Mike returned to claim him and took him to meet the father he had never met. Yozeph Petricska was now Joseph Petrisky.

Joseph didn’t know the man who stood before him, but after a short while he sensed he was indeed wanted. He began to look forward to the journey to what would become his new home in Sabraton, West Virginia. The trio boarded a ferry to Manhattan, then transferred to a streetcar that rattled toward the train station. Everything he saw amazed him—the busy streets, the crowds, and especially the strange buggies without horses. Automobiles were becoming more common in American cities by 1920, though still fascinating to a child from a rural European village.

His constant questions, however, soon irritated his father. Joseph, Sr. now remarried and accustomed to American ways, had a more rigid temperament. Young Joseph sensed quickly that this man, his father, could be strict and easily angered. 

Joseph adjusted quickly to his new home, which included his stepmother Mary and 3-year old stepbrother Bobby. Mary loved young Joseph and treated he and Bobby equally. Mary spoke several languages and so was able to easily communicate with and help teach Joseph. He attended public school - soon advancing to the second grade after quickly mastering his ABC’s and basic math. His father didn’t want him to forget his heritage, so during the summers he attended Hungarian, Slavic, German and Russian church schools. 

Joseph’s favorite subject was geography, and he eagerly sought any information about his homeland of Hungary. But despite his intelligence and curiosity, he had a mischievous streak that often got him into trouble. He once inadvertently set a teacher’s beard on fire. He also had dipped a girl’s curls into an inkwell, pretended to put dynamite in the classroom stove, and famously dropped carbide into the inkwell, creating gas pressure that blew the stopper off and covered the room in ink! Punishments at school followed these antics—and at home, his father’s strict disciplinary style made the consequences far more severe.

By the mid-1920s, the family had saved enough to purchase a two-story house a couple miles away in Morgantown. As Joseph grew older, he stopped attending summer church schools and instead took on work to help support the household. He found a job at a local glass factory, a major industry in West Virginia at the time, working from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for $1.00 per day—a respectable wage for a teenage boy. He was allowed to keep $1.00 of each biweekly paycheck as spending money. A bus ride to work cost five cents, so rather than waste part of his allowance, Joseph typically walked the seven miles to and from the factory each day, still coming home to a list of chores.

Joseph’s paternal grandmother, Mrs. Petricska (now Petrisky), had emigrated from Hungary and moved in with the family in 1927. She shared stories of village life, family memories, and Hungarian customs, eagerly answering Joseph’s questions about the homeland he had left at age seven. Her presence strengthened his connection to his heritage at a time when he was rapidly becoming Americanized.

But life at home remained difficult. On one occasion, a friend brought Joseph several books to read. After the friend left, Joseph’s father unexpectedly threw the books into the furnace and began beating Joseph, an incident so violent that both Mary and Joseph’s grandmother tried to intervene. The next morning, at just fifteen years old, Joseph left home, traveling by foot and hitching rides until he reached Baltimore, Maryland. There he sought work with the United States Shipping Board, which operated commercial vessels in the years following World War I. After lying and claiming to be seventeen years old, he was hired as a deck boy, the lowest-ranking deckhand aboard ship.

Joseph took naturally to seafaring. After a year, he advanced to ordinary seaman, and when winter set in, he transferred to the warm engine room as a wiper—essentially an all-purpose helper responsible for cleaning machinery and keeping the engine spaces tidy. His promotions came quickly: first to fireman, then water tender, then oiler, positions that required increasing technical skill in managing steam engines and fuel systems.

When summer returned, Joseph moved back to the deck as an ordinary seaman. After a year of service and accumulating the required sea time, he qualified for promotion to able-bodied seaman, serving as a steersman in the wheelhouse—the same type of place he had wandered into as a curious child aboard the S.S. Finland.

While on shore-leave in Galveston during the summer of 1933, he met twin sisters Flois and Lois Glover, who had recently moved from Houston with their foster parents. The girls had jobs as car hops and answered to the names “Bill” and “Cricket”. On September 23, 1933, Joseph and “Bill” were married. Joseph wasn’t able to find work on land due to the depression and so returned to work on the sea. He was on an American freighter heading for Antwerp when he got the news that his son was born on August 6, 1934. The baby was named Billy Joe after both his mother and father. Finally, in 1936, Joseph found work with the City of Galveston in the street department.

Joseph began to settle into life on land and became acquainted with people that had an interest in horses and cattle. His father-in-law had formerly worked with the mounted police in Houston and had a horse he no longer needed. Knowing Joseph would take great care of the horse, he gave Woodrow to Joseph as a gift.  He and his friends formed a cowboy organization and Joseph and Woodrow participated in many parades, rodeos and other special events. To supplement his income, Joseph joined the National Guard 143 Infantry, Company H on January 7, 1938. When the National Guard was called into active service on November 15, 1940, Joseph was honorably discharged due to his having dependents. He then joined the Texas Defense Guard, Company B, 49th Battalion at the same rank he had in the National Guard. Using machinery and mechanical skills he was learning in the Texas Defense Guard, Joseph applied for and was hired on at the Pan American Oil Company in Texas City. 

Joseph and “Bill” were growing apart, with each pursuing their own interests without the other. The marriage finally ended in divorce in October of 1945 and Joseph moved out and had to live in his car for a time until he found a room to rent. It was around this time that the American Legion had asked the Defense Guard to help put on a talent show to raise funds to buy a second iron lung for polio victims. At an organizing event to this program, Joseph met a young Dickenson physical education teacher, Miss Hester Coffey, who had volunteered to direct a square dancing performance.  Having heard that this young man had been a married man with a son and was living in his car, Hester politely refused Jospeph’s offer to get to know her better. Joseph was persistent however. It took several weeks and three tries, but Hester finally accepted a first date. They were married on August 10, 1946. The couple lived in Alvin, where Hester had accepted a position to teach physical education at Alvin High School. So Joseph found a carpool and commuted to Texas City for work each day.

April 16, 1947 started out like any other. Joseph was working in his shop at the Pan American Oil Company when all of a sudden he saw through a near-by window an orange mushroom cloud rise into the sky and he was knocked to the floor. The explosion, which became known as the Texas City Disaster, was triggered by a fire on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp which detonated her cargo of 2300 tons of ammonium nitrate and caused a change reaction. It was the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history, killing at least 581 people including all but one member of Texas City’s volunteer fire department. Thankfully, Joseph as well as Hester’s brother’s family in Texas City were shaken up but not hurt. The apartment where Joseph and Hester had initially planned to live before she accepted the teaching position 30 miles away in Alvin, had one of the ship’s anchors land in the front yard and the ceiling was touching the floor!  

Joseph and Hester welcomed two sons while living in Alvin – Joseph Paul Jr in 1951 and Michael Ennis in 1954.  It was soon after this that an old friend told Joseph about available work at Carbide in Seadrift, Texas. Joseph was hired on and for the next year he traveled back and forth between Seadrift and Alvin about every 10 days or so while Hester taught school.  The arrangement was hard on the family—little Mike was so young that he barely recognized his father during those brief, infrequent visits. The family was finally able to move to Port Lavaca in May of 1955 and built a house just in time for the birth of their 3rd son Robert Franklin in June 1956.

Hester went back to teaching and Joseph continued to work for Union Carbide as a machinist for 24 years. Joseph became very active in the Boy Scouts, being inducted into the Order of the Arrow, Karankawa Lodge 307 - an honor recognizing exceptional service and leadership. All three of his boys received their God and Country awards, Order of the Arrow and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. Joseph helped organize an Explorer Troop in Port Lavaca that met at the Fire Station with the local firemen as their sponsors.

Joseph retired from Union Carbide at the end of 1978 and set up his own metal shop in his garage. He spent his retirement years doing precision machining work for local farmers and fishermen, and occasionally served as a substitute teacher in high school shop classes—sharing the skills and work ethic he had honed over a lifetime. He had been a Mason since joining in Alvin in 1947 and was an active leader in the Lodge in Port Lavaca. He was an active member of the First United Methodist Church in Port Lavaca where he served on numerous committees and sang in the choir.

Joseph passed away on September 6, 1993, having lived life to its fullest and leaving behind a legacy of resilience, craftsmanship, service, and devotion to his family and community. He is buried in Greenlawn Cemetery beside the love of his life Hester, who passed away in 2021 at 100 years old. 

Compiled from Joseph Paul Petrisky’s autobiography “My Life from There to Here” – 1980.