08/25/2026
A Tribute to Joe Lyons
September 26, 1941 - August 15, 2026
There are people who live in a town, and then there are people who somehow become part of the town itself.
Joe Lyons was one of those people.
I don't think I can remember ever actually meeting Joe.
From the time I was young, he was simply there, a fixture of Union City. You saw him running. You saw him walking. You saw him riding his bicycle. In those childhood days before common sense and perspective set in, I suppose I thought Joe was just a little... different.
Many years later, I actually got to know him.
And I marveled at him.
Joe became an almost daily visitor to my computer shop. He would come in to use the computers to chat with his girlfriend, tell stories, share his thought for the day, discuss whatever health issue was bothering him at the moment, and sometimes get serious and talk about the weightier things of life.
Mostly, though, there were stories.
So many stories.
I can't even begin to remember them all.
And with Joe, there were times when you weren't entirely sure where the boundary between an incredible story and an unbelievable story might be.
One of my favorites involved a bicycle trip to Florida. Joe had ridden down to do some work, planning to use the money he earned to bicycle back home. The work fell through, leaving him in Florida with twenty dollars and a very long trip back to Indiana.
Joe made it home in thirty days.
And according to Joe, every single day along the way brought some kind of miracle.
One day he stopped at a McDonald's, got a free water and sat down facing the door. A man walked in, looked around the restaurant, spotted Joe and came directly toward him.
"Are you on a journey headed north?"
Joe said he was.
The man told him, "I'm supposed to give you this."
Before handing it over, though, the man explained that he never ate at that McDonald's. He normally ate at a diner down the road. But as he was walking into the diner, he felt God telling him to go to McDonald's instead, look for a man sitting alone who appeared to be on a journey, and give him something.
Then he dropped twenty dollars into Joe's hand.
Another day, Joe had developed a bad sunburn on his nose and stopped at a roadside café to escape the heat for a while. As he was leaving, he bumped shoulders with a man coming inside. The man didn't say anything and Joe continued toward his bicycle.
A few moments later the man came back outside, went to his truck, retrieved something and walked over to Joe.
"God said you need this."
He handed Joe a small bottle of sunscreen.
Then there was the day Joe noticed a bubble forming on the front tire of his bicycle. He knew that if it hit the wrong rock, the tire could blow. He didn't have the money to replace it.
A car sped past him, stopped and backed up.
The driver got out and told Joe that he was the pastor of a small church Joe had just passed. He said he'd been told that Joe needed help.
Naturally, the first thing Joe mentioned was the tire.
The pastor told him there was a bicycle shop about a mile up the road.
"When you get there, tell them I sent you. Anything you need is on me. I'll call ahead and tell them you're coming."
Joe rode into town, found the shop and discovered that the pastor had done exactly what he'd promised. Joe got his new tire and a few other things he needed.
Joe said things like that happened every day the entire trip.
Thirty days after leaving Florida with twenty dollars, Joe arrived back home.
Still carrying twenty dollars.
Joe was convinced those things hadn't happened by accident. Whatever anyone else might make of the stories, Joe saw them as occasions when God had made His presence unmistakably known to him.
And those weren't stories I had to interpret for Joe.
He had already interpreted them for himself.
Of course, not every Joe story involved unexplained providence.
There was the time he was hitchhiking out west and was picked up by a woman wearing a wedding dress. She had apparently just run away from her wedding, and Joe's encounter with her became considerably more intimate than the average hitchhiking experience.
The next day a man picked him up.
During the ride, the man began telling Joe about how his bride had left him at the altar the day before.
Joe's summary of that particular trip was perfect:
"That was an awkward ride."
Then there was the bicycle trip down south when Joe stopped to rest beneath a tree and three men told him they were going to kill him.
They put his bicycle in the back of their truck and forced Joe into the cab.
Joe said that whenever he found himself in dangerous situations, and apparently there had been enough of them for him to recognize a pattern, a strange calm would come over him that he couldn't explain.
In this case, Joe's complete lack of panic apparently unnerved the three men so much that they eventually gave up, dumped Joe and his bicycle alongside the road, and drove away.
Joe survived.
His main complaint?
"Unfortunately, they dropped me off about two miles in the wrong direction."
That was Joe.
Adventure, danger, mystery, humor, and somehow the punchline was that he'd lost two miles.
I tried for years to convince him to write all of these stories down.
Joe always said he would do it "when I can't get around and do anything else."
As far as I know, he never did.
I wish he had.
Because since Joe's passing, I've been reading what other people have written about him, and I've realized just how many different versions of Joe there were.
For generations of people in Union City, he was simply Jogging Joe.
Children who grew up seeing him run through town became adults who still remembered him decades later. People moved away and came home years later, and Joe still remembered them.
Some remember him running.
Some remember him riding his bike.
Some remember seeing him at McDonald's or around town.
Some remember him helping rake leaves, shovel snow, w**d gardens, mow yards or move furniture.
One family remembered that Joe helped them move into their Union City home, and nearly thirty years later, when they moved away, Joe showed up to help them move out.
Others remember his sense of humor.
A woman recalled Joe pointing toward a rainbow and asking if she saw it.
When she said yes, Joe told her, "I made that for you."
Then he smiled, told her to enjoy it, and continued on his way.
A McDonald's employee remembered always making sure his Filet-O-Fish was fresh. One day Joe went across the street afterward and returned with Cadbury Creme Eggs to thank her.
Someone teased him that a haircut made him look like a long-lost Beatle.
So Joe started singing a Beatles song.
And apparently I wasn't the only person who heard Joe offer one particular piece of wisdom:
Always have a good pair of shoes.
Considering how many miles those feet carried him, perhaps we should have listened.
One family called him "Sunshine Man," because whenever their children saw Joe running or riding his bike, he seemed to have a smile on his face.
"The world definitely needs more Joe Lyons," someone wrote after his death.
I think they're right.
Joe's world also extended far beyond Union City.
He deeply loved Yolanda and her family in the Philippines. Her daughters called him Dad. He encouraged them, followed their education, called them, celebrated their accomplishments and proudly showed their pictures to people here. One of his goals, even after his health began slowing him down, was to return to the Philippines.
Their grief after his death makes it clear that Joe wasn't simply somebody halfway around the world who talked to their mother.
He was family.
And that may explain one of the most remarkable things about Joe.
He knew everybody.
More importantly, somehow everybody felt like Joe knew them.
Store clerks, restaurant employees, neighbors, veterans, runners, classmates, children, business owners and people who merely crossed his path all seem to have a Joe story.
Some knew him for decades.
Some barely knew him at all.
But they remembered him.
Since his death, people have suggested scholarships, trees, murals, street names, statues and other memorials.
I understand why.
Because Union City is going to look a little different now.
For most of my life, Joe was simply part of the scenery.
When I was a kid, I didn't understand him.
When I got older, I got the privilege of knowing him.
And somewhere along the way, the guy I had always seen running around town became my friend.
I'll miss Joe coming through the door of the computer shop.
I'll miss his stories.
I'll miss his thoughts for the day.
I'll miss our serious conversations.
I'll even miss our disagreements.
Most of all, I'll miss knowing that somewhere around town, Joe was still out there, walking, riding, talking, helping somebody, planning another adventure or collecting another story he could come in and tell me later.
Joe traveled farther than most of us ever will, yet somehow remained unmistakably ours.
He was a veteran.
A runner.
A traveler.
A storyteller.
A helper.
A father figure to a family half a world away.
My friend.
And, whether he ever intended to become one or not, a Union City legend.
One person wrote that Joe had "walked everywhere but the moon."
I'd say he put in enough miles.
Rest easy, Jogging Joe.
And wherever this next journey takes you, I hope you've got a good pair of shoes.
