Doyel: Fishers' Joe Graves gets his defiance from his dad, whom Hitler tried, failed to kill.
Hitler tried to kill his father, and failed.
Where does a man like Joe Graves of Fishers get the strength to endure what he’s endured, to survive what he’s survived, and to remain at age 75 a delightful husband and defiant golfer and – and this matters here, trust me – a loyal reader of the local newspaper? From his dad, Ray Graves. From his mom, too. You’ll see.
Lots of ground to cover here, and I’ll let you in on a secret:
Joe Graves doesn’t know I’m writing this story. Well, he does now, because he’s like you at this moment – he’s reading it. (Hi Joe. Surprise!)
Joe doesn’t know what I’ve learned about him, about his father surviving a Nazi prison, or about his son dying in the car with a pit bull. Joe and I have never spoken. Not beyond email, anyway. Everyone has a story, and Joe has shared his in bits and pieces, maybe one email a year. He’ll read something personal I’ve written – about fighting depression, about losing my cat, about loving my dog – and share something similar from his own life. It’s affirming and charming and always, always, always, an honor to read.
A few weeks ago Joe received some bad news: The cancer has come back, and it’s not fooling around. What happens next? We’ll see, but here’s how strong he is: With cancer growing under an armpit, a tumor the size of a cherry tomato, Joe Graves went to StonyCreek Golf Club in Noblesville and shot his age.
Actually he beat his age by two shots, shooting a 73. The hole-in-one didn’t hurt.
At least he saw this ace, unlike the time…
Well, there’s a lot to get to here. What say we start with his old man, and a promise to God?
One of Hitler's guinea pigs
Ray Graves wanted to be a teacher. Went to Edinboro State Teachers College in Pennsylvania, where he met his wife, Ruth. But then Hitler started terrorizing Europe and the United States got involved and next thing you know, it’s December 1944 and Ray Graves is marching across the Ardennes, the forest region where Belgium and Luxembourg meet.
You might know the Ardennes better as the site of the Battle of the Bulge.
Allied forces won that war-turning battle in January 1945, but not before the Nazis took 23,000 American troops as prisoners of war. Samuel Raymond Graves Jr. was among the POW’s, and in a story he’d tell for years to come, he prayed to God for a miracle.
Please get me out of this, and I’ll devote my life to you.
Ray Graves was one of the lucky ones, you’d say, because he survived the indiscriminate shooting deaths of fellow prisoners and the experiments Nazis conducted on him and other POW’s. The Nazis shot air into the hearts of U.S. soldiers, just to see what happened next. What happened next? Some died. Ray Graves did not, and after nearly a year in a Nazi prison, after the war ended, he was rescued not far from death.
Ray’s wife, Ruth, never gave up hope, even moving in with Ray’s parents to wait for her husband to come back. A strong woman? She spent most of her 50s and 60s working as a probation officer for the Indianapolis Municipal Courts. But first, decades before that, came good news cloaked in fright: A state trooper with flashing blue lights pulling over Ray’s parents (and Ruth) as they drove cross-country. They were moving to California, and somehow the state troopers knew where they were and stopped them to deliver the good news:
Ray was alive, and he was free.
The Ray Graves who emerged from his Nazi prison stood nearly 6-2 and weighed less than 80 pounds. He kept his word to God, attending seminary and becoming a chaplain in the U.S. Army, serving until his death in 1994. He and Ruth lived all over the country, and in 1948 they had a baby.
They named him Joe.
'Lucy was his life saver'
I am sorry you have lost your friend Theodore. It is amazing that we can form these close attachments to our pets.
We are in a similar near-the-end-of-life situation with our older dog, Rascal. He is very popular with all our grandkids as he was always very gentle and tolerant of them loving him up. But he is a Rascal. In his previous home, he had a pet door to the back yard. He went out and killed a ground hog, dragged it through the pet door, and shook the dead animal’s blood all over the cream-colored carpet and sofa … the Rascal!
That was an email last year from Joe, reading about my cat, about my anguish at having to make the decision that ended Theodore’s life.
Rascal was one of six dogs Joe and Lois have had in 29 years of marriage: Rollie (Dachshund), Abbey (Whippet/Pointer mix), Lucy (Terrier mix), Rascal (Terrier mix), Poppy (Corgi), and Ollie (Terrier mix).
“Lucy was his life saver,” Lois tells me over the phone, a call she took outside while Joe, unaware of this story, was inside. (Hi Joe. Surprise!)
From Joe, I’d already learned a little about Lucy, and about some of the hardships they've faced. He told me once about Rob, Lois’ son from a previous marriage, though in Joe’s telling of the story, Rob was “our son.” Love that.
Rob’s story is an American tragedy, a young man who drinks a little, drugs a little, tries the wrong thing and ends up addicted to heroin. He was 40 and homeless in January 2022 when he found an abandoned house near 25th and Shadeland. He'd already found a pit bull, a stray. Police discovered them in the garage, dead from asphyxiation, the car still running. They don’t think it was suicide, just Rob trying to stay warm, the last in a life of heartbreaking decisions.
Life hasn’t been easy for Joe and Lois Graves. Look, is it easy for any of us? No. Some people never let on, for whatever reason. Could be strength, could be shame, could be none of my business. But Joe lets on. He shares. How can you feel as though you truly know a man you’ve never met? Because you get emails like this:
I struggle with depression (and its cousin, anxiety), so I can relate. I have never felt suicidal, but I've come close and experienced depression that was like walking off a cliff. I wasn't praying, "Lord, help me make it through the day." I was praying, "Lord, help me make it through the next five minutes."
Which brings us to Lucy.
Finding the daughter he never knew
Someone found her hiding under a car at a convenience story in Huntington, Ind.
Joe and Lois heard about Lucy, this Terrier mix, and went to get her.
“I fell in love with Lucy the moment I saw her, and it felt like she was saving my life,” Joe wrote me in February. “We had the same beard, too. Lucy loved people, and when the doorbell rang, she always got super-excited to meet someone new.
“In the spring of 2017, we had a repairman come to the door. I had kenneled Lucy and Rascal in preparation. When the doorbell rang, both Lucy and Rascal got excited and barked a lot. I thought nothing of it. When the man left a couple of hours later I went to let the dogs out of their kennels, and found that Lucy had died. Apparently, she had gotten so excited that she had an aneurysm or heart attack. She died of excitement. Oh, Gregg, my heart was broken! She was only seven, and so beautiful and so healthy… I wept openly about Lucy.”
Joe has lived through sorrow, but enjoyed the other side too. Meeting Lois, for one. Going to college in Chicago, wanting to study history, taking a computer science class and finding his future. He worked for the Burroughs computer company and for the Christian Broadcast Network, then moved to Indianapolis and started his own software company: Joseph Graves Associates, later renamed Leaf Software Solutions.
Other sweet moments: The hole-in-one 28 years ago. Lois was riding in the cart, just there for the company, and witnessed the ace. OK, nobody actually witnessed the ace. It was one of those holes where you can’t see the pin from the tee box. Joe and Lois found his tee shot in the cup.
Finding Alison was another sweet moment.
She was Joe’s daughter from a relationship shortly after college, one that ended in 1971. Joe didn’t know his girlfriend had been pregnant until later, when she left a note at his parents’ house saying she’d had a girl – Joe’s daughter – and put it up for adoption. That was Easter Sunday, 1972.
Life continued, as it does. Joe married in 1973 and had three daughters. He divorced in 1992, met and married Lois in 1994 – who had a girl and boy of her own – and eventually went looking for the daughter he never knew. For almost 20 years he had no success, but a few years ago Joe is paired up on the first tee at StonyBrook with a young man, a stranger.
Turns out, the young man was an adoption attorney.
“A God thing,” Joe says in an email.
The adoption attorney gives Joe tips on finding his daughter, and in August 2019 they exchange letters and photos.
“We look so much alike,” Joe tells me in an email, “and that broke the ice.”
They met that December. Alison is 50.
“I love each of our children deeply,” he says in an email, “and I am very grateful that Alison is in my life.”
Yay! His brain is unremarkable!
Two weeks ago I received the results of a biopsy that revealed I have stage 3 cancer, a melanoma tumor in my armpit. It’s stage 3 if it’s in your lymph system, so that’s not great. I did get the results of a brain MRI. It came back as “unremarkable.” Who knew having an unremarkable brain was such good news? :)
That was Joe on Aug. 15, the goof, sharing something personal and potentially devastating, but leaving you with a smile.
He’s been through too much – including melanoma in the same arm in 2018, and emergency surgery in 2008 on a heart that had 10 blockages – to give up now. He’s still living his life, still loving Lois and their Corgi, Poppy, who hops with those little legs into their bed and crawls onto his chest to wake Joe with morning kisses.
And he’s playing golf. He shot that 73, remember, with his second career ace. He didn’t love that shot off the club face, still grumbling when the ball bounced onto the green and rolled into the cup 156 yards away.
Sometimes life goes that way, and after years of fighting depression and anxiety, after losing Rob and finding Alison, Joe Graves has made a decision about his second bout with melanoma.
“I am absolutely defiant about this,” he says in an email. “Except for the cancer thing, I’m in perfect health. So far the wheels of healing are turning very slowly, so patience and good humor are my best assets. I’ve been staying busy and won my first three competitive matches at StonyCreek. My defiance seems to have carried over into my golf.
“Yesterday I got great results from my full-body PET scan. The cancer has not spread. Treatments will last about a year, and I’ll have surgery for the tumor in December. I plan to fight like hell.”
You do that, my friend. We still need to meet.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: He lost a son, found a daughter, shot his age and beat cancer
