Peace activist and promoter has new cause: saving house

By Guy D’Astolfo

YOUNGSTOWN — Like the house she lives in on Wick Park, Therese Joseph is a keystone of her community, standing against the prevailing current.

Joseph (formerly Powell) owns the grand, turret-crowned home at 204 Broadway. It’s on a street of old mansions that, for the most part, have fallen into disrepair as the neighborhood declined.

Her spacious home serves as the headquarters for Peace Action — Youngstown. It’s the local chapter of Peace Action for a Sane World, which is the nation’s largest grassroots organization for peace and social-justice causes. She is co- chairwoman of the chapter.

Joseph has lived in the house since 1989, restoring it with the help of the North Side Coalition. In the past 20 years, the structure has hosted countless political gatherings, neighborhood watch meetings and concerts.

But Joseph is in danger of losing the house. She took out a loan in recent years, using the house’s equity as collateral to finance a failed business venture with her then-husband. Now she faces foreclosure and must raise $20,000 within 60-90 days.

Toward that end, she has organized several fundraisers, including a performance by the burlesque troupe Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad at the Lemon Grove in August.

She also has lined up a concert by legendary Akron jazz-rockers The Numbers Bands this Saturday at The Youngstown Club.

Over the past two decades, Joseph has promoted about 400 concerts at various Youngstown venues, including the Maennerchor, Cedars Lounge, and the former Pyatt Street Downunder and Inner Works Coffee House (both of which she used to own), as well as at her Wick Park home, which has been dubbed Peace House. “Music is one of the main ways people connect,” she said, noting it’s also a way to get people involved in the cause for peace.

But Saturday’s concert will be her last for a while, as she must devote her attention to saving Peace House.

“This will be the last concert until I am at peace,” she said.

During a reporter’s 90-minute visit to Joseph’s eclectically filled home this week, the phone repeatedly rang. “I provide rides to the store for about seven people in the neighborhood, people who don’t have cars,” she said. Visitors also stopped in on community business. “People know I have connections and can do things for them,” she said.

Joseph wants to stay put and continue her work. “I’ve lived through the worst years of this neighborhood, and I’d like to be here when it gets better,” she said. But first she must find a way out of her jam.

Ray Nakley of Youngstown, also a member of Peace Action, has been a colleague of Joseph’s for decades. He said Joseph is “a unique individual. It’s a clich , but she really is a special person. She has kept Peace Action together for years by opening her home to it. There are many of us who remember and appreciate everything she’s done over the years.

“She’s an extremely generous person,” he continued. “She appreciates and tries to promote the arts and has a passion for the most important things, like living in peace and appreciating human talents.”

Judith Szabo, president of Art Youngstown, said Joseph, who is a board member of the group, “has been a keystone of the arts and entertainment in the Youngstown community for many, many years.”

Joseph does a number of things for income, including freelance graphic-art work and costuming for theater companies. Racks of vintage costumes occupy one of her house’s large rooms.

But if she can first satisfy her bank debt, Joseph wants to reinvent her house into a business.

She would like to take on a partner or investor — one who appreciates music, old houses and city neighborhoods — who can help her turn the house into a business, perhaps a salon for thinkers and musicians.

Doing so would also keep the house out of the hands of an absentee landlord, she said. Joseph cringed at the thought of seeing it subdivided into apartments.

As another money-making effort, Joseph will hold a sale at her home, beginning Sept. 22. Costumes, vintage record albums, collectibles and assorted kitsch are available. Hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., but Joseph recommends calling first — (330) 747-5404 — or e-mailing her at therese@paytown.org.