1923
Joseph
2008
Joseph Henry Cobb
May 29, 1923 — December 12, 2008
Joseph Henry Miglioretto AKA Joseph H (Joe) Cobb
May 29, 1923 – December 12, 2008
Our Father, Joseph Henry Miglioretto was born in Seattle, Washington at Providence Hospital on May 29, 1923 to Edith Alice Ketchum and Antonio J. Miglioretto. Antonio Miglioretto was the brother of Giuseppe (Joe) Miglioretto, Edith's fiancé, who had died ten months earlier from a diving accident in Portland Oregon. Out of love and perceived duty to his deceased brother Giuseppe, Antonio married Edith, providing a home and Father figure while they resided in Sumner, Washington until Joe was approximately two years of age. At that time, Joe's Grandparents, Henry Fortune Ketchum and Estella Ketchum, drove to Sumner and collected their daughter and grandson, moving them back to the North Portland Portsmouth area where the Ketchum family resided. To the family's knowledge, Joe had no further contact with Antonio Miglioretto during his entire lifetime. He knew that Antonio was named on his birth certificate but went to his death on December 12, 2008 still questioning who had really fathered him.
All of Joe's childhood years were spent living in the Portsmouth and Kenton area, renting sometimes just a room, living in boarding houses, and in the Kenton and Multnomah Hotels, where rooms were rented by the week. Joe was three years old when his Mother married Glenn M.Cobb. When he was five years old, his brother David Glenn Cobb (deceased) was born. Joe was not adopted but at some point took the name Cobb even though it was never formally changed. He was kicked out of Kenton Grade School in the eighth grade because he refused to remove his shoes for P.E. He refused because he was ashamed that he had holes in his socks. When his Step-Father Glenn went to the school to straighten out the problem, Glenn ended up swatting the teacher on her behind with a ruler and Joe was not re-admitted. Joe was so proud of him. Imagine a parent today conducting them self in that manner…….but those were different times. Glenn was a driver for Bradley Pies and drank "Cobb's Creek" blended whiskey on the job. This, and the still his Uncle Reuben Ketchum built in the family barn may have contributed to Joe's fondness for alcohol. He vividly remembered his Uncle trying to outrun the cops while he sat on the floor in the backseat pouring the whiskey through a hole in the floorboard trying to empty their precious cargo before being stopped. Uncle Reuben (fondly called Boob) received six months in jail and Joe wrote letters to him on toilet paper because that's all they had.
His Mother divorced Glenn after a few years of marriage because he chose to drink and couldn't support her and her two boys. Public assistance was denied because she was married, and divorce was the only path to survival. She went to work for the WPA and brought home coats with the WPA emblem for them. Joe and his brother Dave were so ashamed of them but there was nothing else to wear.
Joe began working at an early age. We have a picture of him at age 6 in a sweater he bought from money earned picking prunes. His Mother was so proud of him. His Grandfather, Henry Ketchum, was the most influential person in his life, teaching him the never ending, hard work ethic he lived and practiced until the just a few days before he passed. He taught his daughters, his employees, friends and not-so-friends, "You've got to work to eat". At age ten, Joe was digging basements and plowing gardens with a team of horses, cutting firewood, mowing lawns, and selling manure for spring gardens. He said there was great money in manure. At 15 years of age he was back in school and afterwards walking to and from the stockyards to clean the pens. He was paid $.25 an hour and given milk in a whiskey bottle to take home daily.
Along with his Grandfather and family, they ran a logging operation in Cherryville, OR, just east of Sandy. He was 14yrs. old and fondly remembers those years when being with Grandfather, the horses, and in the woods were all that any kid could hope and wish for. His Grandfather wouldn't pay him, insisting that he had to work to help support the family. His pay was his meal and bed. He purchased his first car for $10, a Model T when he was 15 yrs. old but had learned to drive much earlier while working for his Grandfather.
Joe was again kicked out of school (Benson Polytechnic) during his sophomore year. He never graduated, but became highly knowledgeable through his reading and studying of history. He loved reading about the Civil War and anything related to WW1 and WW2. At age 18 he stopped working for his Grandfather when he refused to pay him $10 to have dental work done. Joe joined the Navy but didn't have a chance to serve. On May 5, 1941 he was stricken with polio. He believed he caught it from swimming in the polluted waters of the Willamette which he said was nothing more than a sewer at the time. He was hospitalized for 11 months. He emerged from the hospital with one leg paralyzed but he was back on his feet with the aid of crutches and a leg brace. For the next 50 years you wouldn't have known that he didn't have two good legs because he could do anything he set his mind to do. "You don't stop!"
After leaving the hospital he left for Alabama for a job he believed was waiting for him, only to learn that it wasn't when he arrived. He hitchhiked back to Roseville, California to continue to recuperate and look for work, but ended back in Portland where he went to work grinding watch crystals with Bill Hill, another polio survivor he'd met during his hospitalization. From his $17 weekly pay, he gave his Mother $10 and after a short time, he determined that it wasn't his cup of tea. He and Bill remained life-long friends.
He worked for the shipyards as a drafting trainee, and for Premier Gear, Alcoa, and Hyster, in Portland and for Gerlinger in Dallas, OR. There was never enough money. Dinners at Dan and Louie's Oyster Bar cost a quarter which purchased a cup of oyster stew and all of the crackers he could eat. He had tough decisions to make when the temperature dropped. Should he buy antifreeze or beer? He drained the radiator at night and then drove like mad to the service station the next morning for water.
During the Korean War, Joe started his own business in an empty space at Skolfield's Fuel in Kenton. He bought a table saw and a shop full of tools to supply "chocks" to stabilize rolls of paper, the "Life & Times", for States Marine Line to ship to Mississippi. This was the beginning of his life working with the lumber and wood industry. He married Caroline Schiller in 1950 and had had three daughters by 1954 when he moved his business to Swan Island. In 1955, with the pending birth of his fourth daughter Laurie, he moved the business to 16363 NE Sandy Blvd as J.H. Cobb and Company. He had a wife and children to support and no one was going to stop him from making the business successful.
During these early years, it was more than a struggle. He filed bankruptcy and was denied credit. Good friends and mentors, George Holmes with Parr Lumber, Hal Camp with Camp's Lumber in Gresham, and many others worked with him to supply credit and keep his wholesale mill operating. He traded pallets and wood with the local Italian farmers in exchange for vegetable to feed his family and the pigs and cattle he began rising. He loaded and chained his own trucks with the aid of his Hyster, a dog riding with him always at his side. He ran his planer daily until his shoulders gave out from the physical grind and his need to support his entire body weight on the crutches he needed to walk with. His business and prosperity grew with the addition of employees who stayed with him for many, many years…..Jimmy Harlin, Bill Dove, Bob Whitton, Lyle Potter, and many others, until his full retirement in 1991 when the mill was sold to Doug McGriff, who changed the name to Sunridge Lumber. Through nothing but determination and work, hard work, Joe had become a self-made millionaire.
Joe was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and prostate cancer (his first bout in 1954) almost twenty years before his death. He had operated his mill, farmed, raised Scottish Highlander and other breeds of cattle, built houses, flew his airplane until high blood pressure grounded him, collected antique automobiles, and provided Arabian horses for his daughters to show. His daughter, Sonya, won the U.S. National Championship for Half-Arabian Park Horses in 1967 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and went on with her husband Chris to operate Chris Bickford Stables for the past 37 years. His daughter, Leslie Radke, has enjoyed a thirty year banking career and currently is a VP/Branch Manager for West Coast Bank in Gresham. His daughter, Patsy Cobb, 12 years his former Office Manager at J.H Cobb & Company. Joe's youngest daughter, Laurie (aka Charlie) Whitton, has been fortunate enough to be an outstanding wife and stay-at-home Mother for her two daughters, Andrea Willer and Carrie Miner. He is also survived by his adopted daughter, Stacey Weesner, son David Patterson, grandson Roger Wade Radke, and great-grandchildren Rowan Radke, Zachary Radke, Emily Willer, and Danner Frost. Nieces surviving him are Marilyn Morton and Nancy Johnson.
Joe enjoyed having friends and family gather around him and was more than generous with them, as long as they worked hard and followed his instructions. Things had to be done Joe's way and he was right the majority of the time. Marji Georgens and Kris Savidge, his "wish I could adopt" daughters live in a log home he helped them build on property he sold them next to his home. His eighty-nine year old aunt, Deloris (Dolly) Oliver, grew up with him as a child and lovingly cared for him through the last several years as his illnesses progressed. She will remain in his home for a few years as a token of his gratitude. Other close friends who visited often and helped him as his health failed: Jackie Stansgar, John Reynolds, and Art Spada. Salvador Sanchez, Robert Lublink, Terry Obrist, Michael Riggs, Tom Akeson, and Vern Yeager.
In telling his story, Joe had one final request. He asked that his daughters make sure his Mother will be mentioned with great honor as his lifelong support and Champion. She, too, had been raised by his Grandfather and in his eyes, he truly believed they had both been taught the most valuable lesson ever…..
"You've got to work to eat".
May 29, 1923 – December 12, 2008
Our Father, Joseph Henry Miglioretto was born in Seattle, Washington at Providence Hospital on May 29, 1923 to Edith Alice Ketchum and Antonio J. Miglioretto. Antonio Miglioretto was the brother of Giuseppe (Joe) Miglioretto, Edith's fiancé, who had died ten months earlier from a diving accident in Portland Oregon. Out of love and perceived duty to his deceased brother Giuseppe, Antonio married Edith, providing a home and Father figure while they resided in Sumner, Washington until Joe was approximately two years of age. At that time, Joe's Grandparents, Henry Fortune Ketchum and Estella Ketchum, drove to Sumner and collected their daughter and grandson, moving them back to the North Portland Portsmouth area where the Ketchum family resided. To the family's knowledge, Joe had no further contact with Antonio Miglioretto during his entire lifetime. He knew that Antonio was named on his birth certificate but went to his death on December 12, 2008 still questioning who had really fathered him.
All of Joe's childhood years were spent living in the Portsmouth and Kenton area, renting sometimes just a room, living in boarding houses, and in the Kenton and Multnomah Hotels, where rooms were rented by the week. Joe was three years old when his Mother married Glenn M.Cobb. When he was five years old, his brother David Glenn Cobb (deceased) was born. Joe was not adopted but at some point took the name Cobb even though it was never formally changed. He was kicked out of Kenton Grade School in the eighth grade because he refused to remove his shoes for P.E. He refused because he was ashamed that he had holes in his socks. When his Step-Father Glenn went to the school to straighten out the problem, Glenn ended up swatting the teacher on her behind with a ruler and Joe was not re-admitted. Joe was so proud of him. Imagine a parent today conducting them self in that manner…….but those were different times. Glenn was a driver for Bradley Pies and drank "Cobb's Creek" blended whiskey on the job. This, and the still his Uncle Reuben Ketchum built in the family barn may have contributed to Joe's fondness for alcohol. He vividly remembered his Uncle trying to outrun the cops while he sat on the floor in the backseat pouring the whiskey through a hole in the floorboard trying to empty their precious cargo before being stopped. Uncle Reuben (fondly called Boob) received six months in jail and Joe wrote letters to him on toilet paper because that's all they had.
His Mother divorced Glenn after a few years of marriage because he chose to drink and couldn't support her and her two boys. Public assistance was denied because she was married, and divorce was the only path to survival. She went to work for the WPA and brought home coats with the WPA emblem for them. Joe and his brother Dave were so ashamed of them but there was nothing else to wear.
Joe began working at an early age. We have a picture of him at age 6 in a sweater he bought from money earned picking prunes. His Mother was so proud of him. His Grandfather, Henry Ketchum, was the most influential person in his life, teaching him the never ending, hard work ethic he lived and practiced until the just a few days before he passed. He taught his daughters, his employees, friends and not-so-friends, "You've got to work to eat". At age ten, Joe was digging basements and plowing gardens with a team of horses, cutting firewood, mowing lawns, and selling manure for spring gardens. He said there was great money in manure. At 15 years of age he was back in school and afterwards walking to and from the stockyards to clean the pens. He was paid $.25 an hour and given milk in a whiskey bottle to take home daily.
Along with his Grandfather and family, they ran a logging operation in Cherryville, OR, just east of Sandy. He was 14yrs. old and fondly remembers those years when being with Grandfather, the horses, and in the woods were all that any kid could hope and wish for. His Grandfather wouldn't pay him, insisting that he had to work to help support the family. His pay was his meal and bed. He purchased his first car for $10, a Model T when he was 15 yrs. old but had learned to drive much earlier while working for his Grandfather.
Joe was again kicked out of school (Benson Polytechnic) during his sophomore year. He never graduated, but became highly knowledgeable through his reading and studying of history. He loved reading about the Civil War and anything related to WW1 and WW2. At age 18 he stopped working for his Grandfather when he refused to pay him $10 to have dental work done. Joe joined the Navy but didn't have a chance to serve. On May 5, 1941 he was stricken with polio. He believed he caught it from swimming in the polluted waters of the Willamette which he said was nothing more than a sewer at the time. He was hospitalized for 11 months. He emerged from the hospital with one leg paralyzed but he was back on his feet with the aid of crutches and a leg brace. For the next 50 years you wouldn't have known that he didn't have two good legs because he could do anything he set his mind to do. "You don't stop!"
After leaving the hospital he left for Alabama for a job he believed was waiting for him, only to learn that it wasn't when he arrived. He hitchhiked back to Roseville, California to continue to recuperate and look for work, but ended back in Portland where he went to work grinding watch crystals with Bill Hill, another polio survivor he'd met during his hospitalization. From his $17 weekly pay, he gave his Mother $10 and after a short time, he determined that it wasn't his cup of tea. He and Bill remained life-long friends.
He worked for the shipyards as a drafting trainee, and for Premier Gear, Alcoa, and Hyster, in Portland and for Gerlinger in Dallas, OR. There was never enough money. Dinners at Dan and Louie's Oyster Bar cost a quarter which purchased a cup of oyster stew and all of the crackers he could eat. He had tough decisions to make when the temperature dropped. Should he buy antifreeze or beer? He drained the radiator at night and then drove like mad to the service station the next morning for water.
During the Korean War, Joe started his own business in an empty space at Skolfield's Fuel in Kenton. He bought a table saw and a shop full of tools to supply "chocks" to stabilize rolls of paper, the "Life & Times", for States Marine Line to ship to Mississippi. This was the beginning of his life working with the lumber and wood industry. He married Caroline Schiller in 1950 and had had three daughters by 1954 when he moved his business to Swan Island. In 1955, with the pending birth of his fourth daughter Laurie, he moved the business to 16363 NE Sandy Blvd as J.H. Cobb and Company. He had a wife and children to support and no one was going to stop him from making the business successful.
During these early years, it was more than a struggle. He filed bankruptcy and was denied credit. Good friends and mentors, George Holmes with Parr Lumber, Hal Camp with Camp's Lumber in Gresham, and many others worked with him to supply credit and keep his wholesale mill operating. He traded pallets and wood with the local Italian farmers in exchange for vegetable to feed his family and the pigs and cattle he began rising. He loaded and chained his own trucks with the aid of his Hyster, a dog riding with him always at his side. He ran his planer daily until his shoulders gave out from the physical grind and his need to support his entire body weight on the crutches he needed to walk with. His business and prosperity grew with the addition of employees who stayed with him for many, many years…..Jimmy Harlin, Bill Dove, Bob Whitton, Lyle Potter, and many others, until his full retirement in 1991 when the mill was sold to Doug McGriff, who changed the name to Sunridge Lumber. Through nothing but determination and work, hard work, Joe had become a self-made millionaire.
Joe was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and prostate cancer (his first bout in 1954) almost twenty years before his death. He had operated his mill, farmed, raised Scottish Highlander and other breeds of cattle, built houses, flew his airplane until high blood pressure grounded him, collected antique automobiles, and provided Arabian horses for his daughters to show. His daughter, Sonya, won the U.S. National Championship for Half-Arabian Park Horses in 1967 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and went on with her husband Chris to operate Chris Bickford Stables for the past 37 years. His daughter, Leslie Radke, has enjoyed a thirty year banking career and currently is a VP/Branch Manager for West Coast Bank in Gresham. His daughter, Patsy Cobb, 12 years his former Office Manager at J.H Cobb & Company. Joe's youngest daughter, Laurie (aka Charlie) Whitton, has been fortunate enough to be an outstanding wife and stay-at-home Mother for her two daughters, Andrea Willer and Carrie Miner. He is also survived by his adopted daughter, Stacey Weesner, son David Patterson, grandson Roger Wade Radke, and great-grandchildren Rowan Radke, Zachary Radke, Emily Willer, and Danner Frost. Nieces surviving him are Marilyn Morton and Nancy Johnson.
Joe enjoyed having friends and family gather around him and was more than generous with them, as long as they worked hard and followed his instructions. Things had to be done Joe's way and he was right the majority of the time. Marji Georgens and Kris Savidge, his "wish I could adopt" daughters live in a log home he helped them build on property he sold them next to his home. His eighty-nine year old aunt, Deloris (Dolly) Oliver, grew up with him as a child and lovingly cared for him through the last several years as his illnesses progressed. She will remain in his home for a few years as a token of his gratitude. Other close friends who visited often and helped him as his health failed: Jackie Stansgar, John Reynolds, and Art Spada. Salvador Sanchez, Robert Lublink, Terry Obrist, Michael Riggs, Tom Akeson, and Vern Yeager.
In telling his story, Joe had one final request. He asked that his daughters make sure his Mother will be mentioned with great honor as his lifelong support and Champion. She, too, had been raised by his Grandfather and in his eyes, he truly believed they had both been taught the most valuable lesson ever…..
"You've got to work to eat".
Service
Abundant Life Church
17241 SE. Hemrick Road
Happy Valley
,
OR
US
97089
Friday, January 16, 2009, 11:00 AM
Cemetery
Rose City Cemetery
5625 N.E. Fremont St.
Portland
,
OR
US
97213-1754
Monday, December 15, 2008, 1:00 PM
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