Joe Toye After Band of Brothers: Surviving 2 Amputations & Caring for His Severe [15:08-20:11]

While in Atlantic City, Joe met his wife, Eleanor Ellie Lux, who was almost three years his junior and a native of Philadelphia. They married in Philadelphia in January 1946. After Joe's discharge from the army the following month on February 8, 1946, they settled down in Redding, Pennsylvania, a block away from Joe's brother, Thomas, who he had lived with just prior to enlisting. Joe learned how to use a wooden leg, and he managed to get around fine on it. Even though there were far fewer desk jobs in those days, it was harder for a man with one leg to find employment. Joe received some disability, but not enough to support a family. With his injury, his hope of making a career out of the military had been thwarted. He was first able to find full-time work in a textile plant, and then in the mills for Bethlehem Steel. In the 1950 census, he listed his job as straightener in the machine works industry, most likely at Bethlehem. He eventually took a position at Bethlehem Steel as a drill bit grinder at Grace Mine. He was able to sit down at the sharpening machine to do it. He worked at the job for more than 20 years until he took an early retirement package at age 60. When Grace Mine closed, he then found miscellaneous employment to earn some extra money. Joe and his wife Eleanor had four children, a girl and Nida, and three boys, Pete, Steve, and Jonathan. Their youngest, Jonathan, who was born in 1959, was both mentally and physically handicapped, with what was likely a severe form of cerebral palsy. He was unable to walk, talk, go to the bathroom on his own, or feed himself. When he was three years old, Jonathan had to be put in a state-run home and school for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, called the Hamburg Center, which was about an hour away. He wasn't expected to survive much longer than childhood. I personally have a daughter with cerebral palsy, who was also nonverbal, non-ambulatory, and unable to use the bathroom. I can imagine how incredibly difficult it must have been for Joe to have to place his son in a care home, especially at such a young age. The challenge of trying to lift a growing child when you have only one leg is hard to imagine. This is in addition to Joe finding constant care for his son while he was at work, and while his wife possibly was, too, or was tending to their other three children. Home health aids weren't widely available for people with disabilities back then, at least not in the way that they are today. That only began to change when Medicaid was signed into law in 1965. Still today, home health aids are poorly paid, and it can be a challenge to find good care, as our family knows firsthand. Joe Toys' son, Steve, told author Marcus Brotherton that Jonathan's diagnosis hit both his parents really hard. Joe and his wife Eleanor divorced in 1963. Another factor was Joe's drinking, which he's believed to have done in large part to cope with the effects of the war. The term PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, didn't come into use until the 1970s when soldiers were returning from Vietnam. Prior to that, it was unofficially referred to by terms like shell-shock, war nerves, or combat neurosis. Another word were two. It was common for veterans like Joe Toys to bottle up their trauma, and more often than not, try to numb it with alcohol. Steve recalled that when he was a kid, his dad would fall asleep in the chair watching TV, and start moaning with nightmares. His dad would never admit it, nor would he ever talk about what was troubling him. After the divorce, the kids lived with their mother, initially moving in with her parents in Philadelphia, and then after she remarried, they remained with her and her new husband in Philly. Joe saw them about once a month, and for a two-week vacation each year. Joe Toys visited his son, Jonathan, almost every day in the care home. To the surprise of doctors, Jonathan had survived well beyond childhood. Joe remarried in the late 1960s to a widow named Mary Vogel, whose husband had died of a heart attack in 1963 at age 51. Mary had four children, Rose Mary, Kathleen, Elizabeth, and George. The two youngest, Elizabeth and George, were still living at home. Joe was active in their lives, and umpired George's baseball games. He went to all our games as kids, recalled George. He managed to do stuff up here for myself, and then still get down to Philly to see Pete and Steve play, and then still spend Sunday up at the Hamburg School with Jonathan. His new wife, Mary, told her stepson, Steve, that she had never met a more Christian man than Joe Toys. Two others, he was a stoic tough guy, but on occasion, those closest to him were given access beyond his somewhat icy exterior, and saw the true size of his heart. His wife emphasized that his faith went far beyond going to church every Sunday. It was constantly conveyed in his actions. In the interview with the YouTube channel, finally, Joe Toys steps on George, recalled