JOE THE TURK & ME

Many of you know that I’m on a mission to move out some of my “things” – that is, things that I can part with – so my little apartment won’t look so cluttered.

I’m now having to decide if I should keep or give away “Joe the Turk.”

I worked for The Salvation Army twice in my working career. The first time was from 1968 to 1971. I was hired as secretary for the Ontario (California) Corps (church). As you know, the Salvation Army has many programs to help the needy in the community, and within a few months after I started work the welfare counselor quit. Captain Chet Danielson asked me to take on that job and he would hire a new secretary. I did, and he did.

Then in 1994, the very week of the big Northridge earthquake, I was hired as secretary at the Anaheim Salvation Army Adult Rehab Center, where I worked until I retired in June of 2000. From those two stints with “Sally Ann,” as The Salvation Army is fondly called, I learned lots of the history of the organization. One of the most unusual things I learned about was “Joe the Turk.”

There was a real Joe, and he was born in 1860 in Turkey but of Christian Armenian parents. His given name, however, was Nishan Der Garabedian. At age 17 he decided to come to the US to work with his brother as a shoemaker, but in his travels to get here he kept seeing the early Salvation Army members being mistreated as they took the gospel to the streets, and always he came to their aid. Calling himself “Joe,” ultimately he threw his lot in with the Salvationists, and cornet in hand he began preaching on the streets. He himself was tossed into jail any number of times. Evangelizing on street corners was not looked upon kindly by the authorities

According to the website http://www.salvationarmysouth.org/turk.htm “A landmark decision in 1893 in Wisconsin by the supreme court [in]The State ex rel. Garrabad (sic) versus Dering declared as unconstitutional a law which caused the arrest of Joe for playing his cornet in the street. He was eventually appointed evangelist for The Salvation Army, traveling the country attired in his special costume and carrying an oversized red, yellow and blue umbrella with religious slogans on it and a picture of the founder, General William Booth. Around the outside of the umbrella were lights that lit up and on top was a small miniature statue of liberty with a torch that also lit up.”

There are several fine websites that give additional information on this most unusual figure in evangelism which can be found by any good search engine using “Joe the Turk.”

In 1996 the Trade department at The Salvation Army had in their catalog a figurine of Joe the Turk that I purchased for my curio cabinet. It seemed a good blending of my years living in Istanbul with the years that I spent with The Salvation Army.

So the question now in front of me is: Am I ready to move Joe the Turk to a new home? Who besides me would find any significance in him? I don’t have an answer yet. But I think my little figurine deserves better than a thrift store end, don’t you?