JOSEPH ALOYSIUS TALLMAN
NOVEMBER 22, 1946 – MARCH 29, 2023

What do you get when you mix a can of ice cold Coca-Cola; a handful of salted cashews; a square of crumb cake from B&W Bakery in Hackensack, New Jersey; a cup of strong coffee with half & half and Splenda; a serving of Stouffer’s macaroni & cheese; a scoop of Breyer’s Natural Vanilla ice cream; a slice of Taylor ham; a peanut butter & jelly sandwich on rye bread; a French cruller; a shot of Jameson’s; a schmear of grease from under the hood of any British roadster or Chrysler vehicle; a generous pour of marine engine oil; a spray of salt water straight from the ocean over the windshield of a Pro-Line center console boat; a sliver of Irish Spring soap; a splash of Bay Rum aftershave; a foot of NYSE ticker tape; $20 worth of Quick Pick lottery tickets; the latest copy of Barron’s, MotorTrend, and BoatUS magazine; a TV remote permanently set to the History Channel; highlight reels from the best episodes of Victory at Sea and NPR’s Car Talk; a car radio tuned strictly to Sirius XM comedy channels; an album of music from James Taylor, Michael McDonald, and doo-wop greatest hits from CYO dance days gone by; a pair of well-worn docksiders, white polo shirt, khaki chino shorts, sunglasses, silver Miraculous Medal, gold Fairleigh Dickinson class ring with deep red stone, and Notre Dame baseball cap; and a pinch of fur from a half-dozen beloved Golden Retrievers, three Australian Shepherds, one freckle-faced mutt, and the most devoted Corgi ever known to man… And simmer them for a childhood of Bergen County Catholic grammar school, an adolescence of summers at the Jersey Shore, a four-decade Wall Street career, nearly a half-century of proud and adoring fatherhood, and a lifetime of deep and enduring friendships too numerous to count, which were his lifeblood and his heart’s joy? You get the man we knew and loved as Joe, Dad, Pop-Pop, Joey T., Mr. Joe, Aloe, and Mush.
Joe (for the sake of brevity and familiarity) was born on Friday, November 22, 1946, in Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, New Jersey. To hear him tell it, his unexpected arrival, two months premature, interrupted Thanksgiving dinner (traditionally celebrated on a Thursday, thus demonstrating that his three-quarters Irish heritage had bestowed on him the gift of telling, and re-telling, a long and oftentimes embellished story, to the delight of both his listeners and himself). His first birth certificate had him named Richard Eric, but as Joe liked to tell it, due to the heroics of his maternal grandfather, Joseph Aloysius Delaney, who drove 200 miles in a blinding snowstorm to get blood needed for an Rh Factor related transfusion during his delivery (remember that Irish poetic license), his parents, Jerry and Anne, changed his name a few days later in homage. Joe’s early days were spent in a nurturing and close-knit home at 503 Teaneck Road, where he loved and raised many a dog and one very personable duck, and idolized his brother Jerry, who was 18 months his senior. The stories of Jerry & Joe’s mischief and mishaps (plus the occasional battle of wills or outright wrestling match) are legendary. Joe had Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, piano lessons, excursions across the George Washington Bridge into the city for the New York Auto Show, hours upon end of hanging out with friends and roughhousing in Ammann Park, fishing the New Jersey inlets and shoreline and New York’s Greenwood Lake, and frequent family get-togethers with cousins galore.
Joe attended St. Anastasia’s Grammar School, where he also served as altar boy on the weekend (and early on developed a taste for Manischewitz by sneaking sips of the communion wine with his comrades while the priest’s back was turned). He used to boast that he managed to keep his middle name secret from his schoolmates for his entire grammar school tenure until the St. Anastasia’s graduation ceremony in June 1960, when the priest boldly called out his full name – and instead of proudly marching forward to receive his diploma, he slumped down in his chair while his pals around him exclaimed, as quietly as possible given the watchful eyes of the nuns, “Aloysius?!”
That same year, while on a class trip to Washington, D.C., Joe was dealt an even harsher blow, one that would change the course and contours of his life forevermore: he fell ill with Type 1 diabetes. For those of you who have been spared an up-close-and-personal introduction to this disease, just know that it is brutal, unpredictable, relentless, and completely unfair. Unlike Type 2 diabetes, it is entirely beyond the control of the person it strikes – one day everything is humming along just fine, and the next the T-cells of the body’s immune system are waging an all-out war on the beta cells of the pancreas. And for a young teenager in 1960, the burden was nearly unbearable. Technology to deal with the disease was non-existent. Testing blood glucose levels took three days, not three seconds. There were no insulin pumps or pens, not even disposable syringes – glass syringes had to be sterilized by boiling them on the stove. And no pop-on, pop-off single-use needles: the same one was used over and over again, sharpened on a stone to be sure any barbs were removed. Throughout the remainder of his life, this disease handed him hardship after hardship, to the point where many reasonable people would have had enough and thrown in the towel, but Joe persevered and rallied from near defeat time and time again, proving the fates – and many of his doctors – wrong. That’s not to say he didn’t complain, especially when the assaults were especially harsh (eye surgeries, heart procedures, amputations, and finally vascular dementia). But be it an irrepressible streak of “stubborn Irish” or the overriding love for the family and friends he had here on earth, Joe never lost his fighting spirit or his certainty that he’d live to see another day.
During his teen years, Joe did not let diabetes slow him down. He attended Bergen Catholic High School in Oradell, then transferred to Teaneck High School in his junior year. He ran track and played tennis, and spent weekends working odd jobs, socializing with friends, and attending mass and the regular CYO dances. Summers brought the added delight of days and nights at the Jersey Shore. After graduating from Teaneck High School in 1965, Joe worked for a year for the U.S. Postal Services delivering mail in Fort Lee, New Jersey (where some of the regulars on his route included Buddy Hackett and Frank Sinatra’s parents). He then attended Edward Williams College in Hackensack, New Jersey, where he graduated with an A.A. degree in 1969. Joe then went on to attend Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey, where he graduated with a B.S. degree in Business Administration in 1971. Industrious all of his adult life, often holding down multiple jobs at once, Joe worked his way through school delivering newspapers, busing tables, valeting cars, and – his favorite, given his love for cars and his admiration for the owner of the business who took him under his wing – pumping gas and apprenticing as a mechanic at an Esso service station in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
With his college diploma in hand, Joe was blessed by the benevolence of another astute businessman, a neighbor who helped him land a position as a floor broker at the New York Stock Exchange in 1971. Thus began his long and storied Wall Street career, which took him from William D. Witter to Morgan Stanley to Eberstadt to Paine Webber/Blyth, Eastman Dillon to Dean Witter to Tucker Anthony back to Dean Witter and finally to Raymond James. The bulk of his professional life was spent on trading desks in Midtown or Lower Manhattan. Because for Joe family always came first, and he wanted the very best he could provide for his four cherished daughters, this meant a daunting daily commute into the city from an inviting yellow house tucked into the woods of New Windsor, New York, for which he had an enduring fondness. Weekends were spent in full dad mode, exploring nearby Bear Mountain and West Point, and boating and fishing along the Hudson River. In addition to classic cars, family time, and Golden Retrievers, Joe thoroughly enjoyed all things nautical. And for him, standing on the bridge of a boat was great, but digging his hands into the greasy, whirring engine compartment was even better.
After the stock market crash of 1987, Joe and family relocated to Florida’s Gulf Coast, settling first in Safety Habor, then later in St. Petersburg. In 2003, Joe welcomed his fifth daughter into the world, and then in 2006 got the surprise of his life when the doctor announced, “It’s a boy!” Needless to say, Joe has left the Tallman family tree well branched and verdant, with six children and 11 grandchildren at current count.
With the less demanding pace of life in Florida, Joe relished the extra hours in the day that he could spend with his kids, attending their practices, games, ceremonies, and performances. He also cherished his gig as chief taxi driver, taking one kid here and then another there, often with a dog or two along for the ride. Joe also enjoyed family adventures to faraway places: sailing on many Caribbean cruises; visiting “the girls” and their families in Asheville, San Francisco, and Cincinnati; joining friends at Rum Point in Grand Cayman, at the Duxford Air Show and Stonehenge in England, to tour the historical sights of Philadelphia and Delaware, to attend weddings in New Orleans, and on a cruise to Bermuda and Grand Turk; jetting across the Atlantic for a long Easter weekend in Paris with mass at Notre Dame; climbing the Mayan ruins in Belize; meeting up in Dublin and London with a daughter spending the summer semester studying abroad; spending January weekends with his brother and sister-in-law to get his “Jersey fix,” catch up with cousins, and watch NFL playoff games; riding tractors and combines through the cornfields of Iowa; exploring Toronto and Niagara Falls; hanging out with a fun (and funny) bunch of relatives in Indiana touring the Notre Dame campus, riding in Amish buggies, and eating fresh cherry pie; and finding his grandparents’ graves in County Cork, Ireland.
In 2014, Joe and family moved across the state to Florida’s Space Coast, taking up residence in Merritt Island. There he continued to pursue his passions and endear himself to the community in much the same way he had done all of his life: making friends with the local mechanics; chatting with the clerks who sold him weekly lottery tickets; coaxing the life story out of every visitor or service professional who came to his home; charming all of the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and EMTs who helped him stick around for as long as he did.
Joe Tallman was a top-notch human being. He loved without bounds. He said “I love you” often, and he meant it. Connecting and communicating with those he cared about fed his soul and put the proverbial gleam in his eye. For Joe, a handshake was his word, and his word was his bond. Joe was exceedingly generous with his time, money, and wisdom. He was as adept at listening to a story as he was at telling one. Young children and dogs were naturally drawn to him (whether or not he had treats in his pocket, which he quite often did), sensing the fundamental goodness in him. He could be goofy and childlike in his enthusiasm and glee, and he was amusingly brand-loyal. For Joe, there was always room at home for one more pet, room at the holiday table for one more guest, room in his heart for one more addition to the family. While patience was not one of his prominent virtues, and he could rarely keep a secret for more than a day or two (due to either excitement or forgetfulness), he was eager, gregarious, steadfast, and doting – and always ready for fun.
To say he will be missed is an understatement, for sure. To say the world is a quieter place without him in it – with his penchant for waking up talking, going to sleep talking, and even talking wildly in his sleep – goes without saying. To say that he was loved – and that he loved us all so well – is our peace.
Joseph A. Tallman was preceded in death by his parents, Jerome Francis and Anne Delaney Tallman. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn Curry Tallman; brother Jerome (Patricia) Tallman; children Erica (Steven) Skinner, Carrie (Tim) Sax, Rebecca (Jason) Conard, Claire (Shai) Birmaher, Margaret Tallman, and Joseph C. Tallman; and grandchildren Cameron, Dawson, and Emma Skinner; Grace, Ruby, Rosalie, Darcy, and Daisy Conard; and Jane, Dot, and Penny Birmaher.
Calling hours for Joseph A. Tallman will be held on Friday, April 28, from 5-7 pm at Island Cremations & Funeral Home, 405 S. Courtenay Parkway, Merritt Island, Florida. A funeral service will be held on Saturday, April 29, 2023, at 11 am at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 4 Church Street, Cocoa, Florida.
In lieu of flowers, Joe’s family would be honored to have donations in his memory made to Alex’s Paw Park, PO Box 121, Holmdel, NJ 07733.