EnemiesList.info

Nixon Enemies List entry for
Joseph P. Wells:

List and position:Second, #557
Name as originally listed:Joseph P. Wells
1972 location:New York, NY

Comments

Name/Date:Richard WellsJun 6, 2010 9:12am
Comment:I'd stop by Uncle Joe's and stay a night or two when traveling between our common hometown of Pittsburgh, Pa. and the private school I had a partial scholarship to in New Hampshire. It was an impressionable time for me and, without realizing it, I was becoming "liberated" like so many others during the Vietnam fiasco. Joe was onto Lee Atwater and the danger he represented early on. Joe also didn't pull any punches in discussing our, largely dysfunctional family. There is nothing like honesty in educating youth (Howard Zinn should have been Secretary of Education).
Conservatives seek to conserve the status quo, not the environment, the "American Way," or the faux morals that greed disguised as capitalism adorns like the Emperor's New Clothes. If they had their way we'd all still be Puritans, discriminating against Quakers, ripping off real estate from "unsophisticated" natives (like our common 1st known ancestor, William Wells of Southold, Long Island, 1638, appointed in the first group of English speaking Sheriffs in New York), owning slaves, suppressing women, racing to overpopulate the planet and rape its resources etc. The "economy" that a corrupted media always presents as some sort of shared endeavor, is actually a Ponzi scheme set up by the avaricious few to play with the money working and middle class folks struggle to save and invest.

We could have benefited from Joe's voice these last 20 years. The sane have lost much ground in that time.

Joe's middle name was Phillip. He was born in Pittsburgh, the 6th of 7 children of Dr. Richard Dow Wells and Mary Elizabeth Stevens, on April 30, 1941. He was an honor student at Penn State and held impressive positions in his working life in Manhattan, a place that was a perfect fit. He was married twice, the first producing twin boys, one of whom was run over by a car and killed in front of Joe's eyes. He'd seen things in his youth that might have crippled many but maintained a sense of wit and humor thinking people would be attracted to.

In the early 70's he got me into CUNY with an ease that would impress. I stayed with him for 2 or 3 months until personal issues back in Pa. and the realization that I couldn't afford Manhattan, sent me packing. We stayed in touch and my then wife and I went to see him circa '88' or '89' and had a blast. It was the last time I saw him.

Joe came to the realization he was homosexual at some point (you can see a letter he wrote in 1972 supporting a beleaguered faculty member at his alma mater at the bottom of this page;
http://www.joeacanfora.com/pennsylvania.html#secPublic

His eventual "outing" to his Pittsburgh kin, and the reaction of about half of them to his lifestyle, caused him some pain. In fact, to this day, 20 years after his death, a hypochristian or two who share his DNA yet malign him. (I continue to attempt to coin that phrase and Joe would have loved it).

Joe was an early victim of AIDS (I'm convinced it was invented and purposely placed in the middle of Africa and the Gay communities of N.Y.C. and San Francisco by the same folks referred to above, but that's a topic for another discussion). When I found out I wanted to see him but he was quite adamant that I stay away and I know it's because he didn't want me to see him waste away. I should have gone anyway. He died on the eve of his 49th birthday, April 29, 1990.

I thank Mr. Axtell for posting this, previously unknown fact about my brilliant Uncle. I've been busting with pride since I saw it when Googling Joe last night and can't wait to share it with other, sentient, sensitive or not, relatives. I thank you as well for forcing me to download Firefox.

History "will out" eventually. Time continues to prove that we who opposed the contrived conflict in Southeast Asia were right, that Uncle Joe was right about Atwater and that Nixon, was indeed, a crook.

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