A Historical Look at Joe the Turk – Interview with Author Lt. Colonel Eddie Hobgood
Southern Spirit: What interested you in Joe the Turk?
Colonel Hobgood: I remember Joe the Turk when I was a junior soldier, back when the Army did hero cards of different characters. I recognized very early in my life that I was different. And there something resonated.
I really didn't think about him again until 1992. There was a National Advisory Organizations Conference in Washington, D.C., that the Southern Territory was responsible for. They put together a living walkthrough history museum of the Army. I got an assignment to portray Joe the Turk outside of the museum with a 15-minute program to entertain the crowd as they waited outside to take their turn.
Through that I discovered much about him. I started getting invited to corps to do the monologue at their annual dinners or other events. It was kind of shocking. Then when my wife Kathy and I became territorial youth secretaries (TYS), one of the things the TYS did was go to youth councils and speak. The idea of standing up and preaching to a bunch of teenagers did not appeal to me. I felt like I needed to try something different to get their attention.
That encouraged me to take that 15-minute monologue and develop it into what is now a 50-minute music monologue presentation [complete with audio and visuals]. So 2005 is when this present version that I do came on the scene.
Whenever I had the opportunity, I would visit the archives at National Headquarters (NHQ), going through every War Cry they had to see if I could find anything about Joe the Turk. I also researched newspaper articles from all around the United States of Joe's adventures. I knew nobody had written a book about Joe, and I had all this material. I knew that this was a really important story of our heritage.
Although I'd never written a book before, this needed to be in a book form. I knew it was a story that had to be shared before it got lost. The thing about Joe is, for a lot of years we've had this cartoon character in our minds, that he was all show and tell, and there was not a lot of substance to him. First of all, he was a significant personality in the life of The Salvation Army for over 30 years. He was an evangelist, and the costumes and the accouterments were all part of getting people's attention, which was very early day Salvation Army.
Southern Spirit: What was the biggest surprise you found in your research?
Colonel Hobgood: First, he was arrested 52 times. But he was never arrested in the South. When he came to the South, almost without exception, he was welcomed with arms wide open, and it was front page news that Joe the Turk was in town. That surprised me. The other thing is that he never achieved the rank of major. Even after all those years of service. He deserved it. There's been some speculation that maybe there was something he did wrong or was involved in. We thoroughly searched the NHQ archives and the Eastern Territory where most materials are, but we could find absolutely nothing.
For many years, Joe the Turk was the most recognized and the most popular Salvation Army officer in the United States outside of New York. All you had to say is the name “Joe the Turk,” and people knew exactly who you were talking about, because he had so much news coverage, and because the War Cry was put in the hands of a lot of people.
Southern Spirit: Why was Joe the Turk at the center of so much trouble?
Colonel Hobgood: A lot of Salvationists were arrested during those days, but they didn't get the press that he did. He was very careful to regularly write articles for the War Cry, to share where he had been, what he had done. After those first arrests, War Cry readers wanted to know the adventures of Joe the Turk. There was a following that he had around the country, wanting to know what kind of trouble he had gotten into. Some people lived vicariously through his adventures.
Because Joe was a National Headquarters officer, the whole United States was his parish. So, when the Army was denied the right to preach, they would often send in Joe. This big six-foot, 250-pound guy with the bright red uniform would come into town and stir it up, and boom—he and the officers would often get arrested.
Southern Spirit: What was the Armenian crisis and what was Joe's involvement in it?
Colonel Hobgood: Joe was born in the Armenian part of the Republic of Türkiye. In Turkey at the time, Armenians were second-class citizens because they were Christian. Armenia was the first nation to declare itself Christian. The Turkish citizens were Muslim. Because the Armenians would not convert to Islam, there was real tension. Many Armenians were mistreated. There were periods of time in Turkey where they got along together fine. Joe had a brother who was a wealthy businessman who had a business in Constantinople, Istanbul. There were periods of peace, but there were also periods of trouble.
One of the reasons for the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 was because the Turks were persecuting the Armenians. In 1895 and 1896, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were murdered. Then under the cover of World War I, it happened again. It became known as the Armenian Holocaust. It was the first one of the 20th Century. Hundreds of thousands—millions—over the course of those years were murdered. They were marched out to the desert, left to die. In 1887, as they were going through persecution, Joe left Constantinople and he fled to Tbilisi, or Tiflis, as it's known today, where there was an Armenian refugee settlement. He lived there until he came back to Constantinople for a short period of time. He had a brother named Simon who had immigrated to the States in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Southern Spirit: The end of Joe's life was rather tragic. What made it that way?
Colonel Hobgood: A couple of things. First, after World War I, the Army changed. We were used to being hated, misunderstood, mistreated. But because of the Donut Girls and the incredible ministry that they had during the war, the soldiers came back in love with The Salvation Army. The Army had not felt that before to any great extent. Generally, the Army was totally disrespected, until this Donut Girls service totally changed that. The Army began to quickly evolve and become respectable. And Joe was not respectable. He was doing it the old way, going into the middle of the fight, getting himself arrested.
The War Cry articles about Joe began to get fewer and fewer. His travel itinerary got smaller and smaller until it finally disappeared. Articles in the War Cry became more sophisticated. They weren't about the fights and the skirmishes.
We have a couple letters that say that leadership was embarrassed by him. So his role became diminished until he retired. The last year of his officership, there was only one article about him in the War Cry, although he was active. That was about him leaving to go to Greece to find his sister.
The other thing is, Joe thought he might be a businessman, but he was not. He bought an apartment complex that is still standing in New York, about seven or eight blocks from the Centennial Memorial Temple. He managed that, but he was a terrible manager.
He spent a lot of time outside of the country. He had family in France, so he spent a lot of time there, and he left his business to other people to handle for him. Then he bought a house in upstate New York that he rented out.
The tenants in his apartment building didn't pay their bills. Even if he had collected all the money, it still would not have covered the mortgage. So, any personal money that he had was gone, especially when New York state or the city of New York came in and said, you've got to do some upgrades. He spent all his personal money so that when he died, he was absolutely broke. Because of that, when he died and was buried, he did not have a tombstone. He was in an unmarked grave for many years until the 1980s.
I’ve wondered, why? Why didn't somebody from the Army step forward and raise some money? He was a hero in the eyes of many Salvationists. I'm sure it wasn't advertised that he didn't have any money and he didn't have a grave marker. Thank goodness for the Armenians who found out about him.
Southern Spirit: If you could meet Joe the Turk today, what would you say to him?
Colonel Hobgood: First, I would like to hear him tell the stories that didn't make it to print. I know what motivated him. His mother and father died when he was young. Other family were all being persecuted, but The Salvation Army accepted him. All of his craziness, eccentricity, and the Army became his family. He had lost most of his family. He had to flee from his homeland, but when he found The Salvation Army in Liverpool and again in San Francisco, they accepted him. They loved him. They embraced him, and he found a new home.
He found a new family. He found his purpose in life. And those were his motivations, why he fought for the Army, why he would run headlong into the battle, and it didn't matter if he got beat up, shot at, or thrown into jail with a zillion bedbugs. It didn't matter because he was going to fight with his last breath for his family, and even in retirement when he went to France, knowing the Army was not loved in France. In retirement he would try to get them to do open airs, try to get them to do what he did in the States so that they could become a strong Salvation Army. Sadly, it didn't work. Still, he was a soldier in the Salvation War till his last breath.
Southern Spirit: What would you like for readers to take away from your book?
Colonel Hobgood: First, regardless of what your gifts are, God can use those giftings to further His Kingdom. I hope that people will read the book and see what those who came before endured so that we can have this easy life that we have. Let's be honest, how many of us have been beaten up for our faith? I know a few people have lost family over it. When I became a Salvationist at nine, I lost my best friend because his mother said The Salvation Army was a cult, and you can't see him anymore. I never saw him again, even to this day, but that was nothing compared to what those early Salvationists did and what they sacrificed for us. We say the shoulders are broad on which we stand, but I don't think a lot of us truly understand the depth of what that means and what people gave.