A TRIBUTE TO MY BROTHER
As you have probably become aware, my brother Joe passed this morning just after 7:15 AM. I have been asked to write some things to make available for his service and felt I might share that with you all today. A lot is spinning around in my head, though expected, yet, his passing is still a jolt for me.
ABOUT JOSEPH DOUGLAS DUBÉ - A REAL CHAMPION IN LIFE
Joe was born on February 15, 1944 in a small clinic near Altha in West Florida, delivered at 9 pounds, already a big boy, by Country Doc Eldridge. He was named after his father Joseph, plus, one of the prominent town merchants - Douglas Baldwin, who owned and operated a large department store in Altha, Florida not far from the M&B Railroad tracks. Douglas Baldwin was a close friend of Joseph and Hardie when they lived there until they later moved to Jacksonville in 1945.
Joe’s mother - Hardie Pumphrey, was born in Jackson County on December 4, 1907, her ancestry going back to Holland, when the Pumphrey Family relocated from that country to Wales and later immigrated to New Burlington, New Jersey in the mid-1600. In time, family members drifted south to Leon Country, Florida, which was a huge county at that time, later broken up. Arriving in America, the Pumphrey Family became Quakers with the family rooted in Religious Faith to this day.
Joe’s father Joseph Arthur Gerald Dubé was Catholic. He was born in Lewiston, Maine on June 17, 1912, to Laura Frechette-Dubé, and Luger Dubé. Going back the French Dubé Family in the person of four brothers emigrated from France to Quebec (New France at the time) in the St. Lawrence region of Canada in the 1600’s. Luger Dubé immigrated to Lewiston, Maine in America in the late 1800’s, where he met and married Laura Freschette.
Joe and his older brother Virgil were active fun-loving and free-spirited boys. Both began to take interest in physical culture when Joe was around 9 years old, his father ordering him and Virgil a Jiffy-Gym exercise band. Along with that mode of exercise, the boys chopped wood for exercise to furnish firewood for the family heater located in the family living room. Later Joe’s father ordered a Whitely spring set that lasted several years until in grade school in his mid-teens, he and Virgil were introduced to weights in the school gym, in the form of concreted weights attached to a galvanized pipe. Along with brother Virgil, and friend and lifting buddy Terry White, he began training for Olympic weightlifting, and became the youngest person in the world to press 300 pounds at age 16. He went on to set many records, first as a many-time Florida State Championship, then to set Junior and Senior World Records. He was the youngest man to press 400 pounds, that achievement at age 19. He went on to set five World Records in the two-hands Olympic Press, and was greatly encouraged during his early career by his friend Paul Anderson of weightlifting fame. Joe became the 1967 Pan American Champion. He placed third in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, and became World Champion in 1969 in Warsaw, Poland, having defeated a powerful Russian. Though Joe set countless records on his way to the top, his greatest athletic achievements were in the Super-Heavy-Weight Class.
But he lastly proclaimed that his greatest gold medals were his two sons; Little Joe and Jason.
Joe was active in promoting the sport of Olympic Weightlifting, and was a whizz at playing dominoes (his mother Hardie taught him to play as a boy), which he loved to do play people digitally across the world on his computer. And as an accomplished artist and with a sense of humor, he especially enjoyed characterizing faces on his computer in Photoshop, goofiness he and all of us adored.
I ALWAYS REMEMBER JOE WEIDER MOCKING HOFFMAN BACK IN THE DAY, SAYING THAT ONLY JOE DUBE WOULD POSE FOR PICS WITH THE UGLY GIRLS FROM YORK PA. UNLIKE THE CALIFORNIS BEAUTIES.
