4/20/1956 – 10/20/2023
Lawrence, KS
Joe Michael Anderson, aged 67, died on October 20, 2023, at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, from esophageal cancer. Given his wild and reckless youth, he was pleasantly surprised that he lived so long.
Joe was born on April 20, 1956, in Emporia, Kansas. He was the youngest of Frances and Paul Anderson’s three children and their only boy. Considerably younger than his two sisters, Sondra and Joan, he frequently observed that he had been raised by three mothers. Three mothers were probably necessary – he was walking at the age of nine months, and, as a toddler, liked to play with knives. His first home was in Osage City, Kansas, where his father owned and operated Anderson Dry Goods. Osage City is also the town where precocious four-year-old Joe wandered away from home and got himself locked inside the Lutheran Church. He was found a few hours later, asleep on a pew, with gum in his hair. A couple of short years later he learned how electricity works – with the aid of a safety pin and a wall socket.
When Joe was nine years old his family moved to a farm outside of Osage City, where Joe first pondered one of life’s great mysteries: Why exactly must cows be milked at the crack of dawn? Joe enjoyed outdoor life, fishing, camping and pretending to hunt, with his father’s dogs. He had a lifelong love of shooting guns, but he didn’t feel the need to kill anything with them.
Joe always liked taking things apart to see how they worked, then putting them back together. Eventually he used this talent working on motorcycles. When he made his first trip to Sturgis, South Dakota, it was on a Harley-Davidson Super Glide.
Much to the relief of the faculty of Osage City High School, Joe graduated a semester early, and, in 1974, he enrolled at the University of Kansas. As he liked to ponder life’s big questions, he majored in philosophy, and, because he was a philosopher, he did not find it necessary to graduate. He quit a semester short of his degree.
Beginning in his years at KU, Joe was frequently mistaken for his cousin Stan McCool. He gently corrected this error by pointing out that he was the good looking one.
Joe worked a variety of jobs – hay bale tosser, house painter, itinerant greenhouse builder, bartender, bouncer and pop delivery man before finding his life’s work in 1984, when he went to work for Rick Miller in the Exploration Services division of the Kansas Geological Survey. He eventually held the position of drilling manager and senior research assistant. Because he was a driller, he believed that he could honestly claim that he did indeed know his a$$ from a hole in the ground, and he was proud that after almost four decades of working a drill, he still had all his appendages. Joe also assisted with seismic testing, which allowed him to shoot really big guns into the ground. Joe’s talents were best used, however, by turning Rick’s ideas for machines into reality. He was a truly happy man in his machine shop, his happiness reflected in its utter chaos. He also loved driving around western Kansas for the annual measurement of the Ogallala Aquifer.
Over his years at the Geological Survey, Joe had the opportunity to mold many young minds. Was that a good idea? Time will tell. Many of the people who worked with Joe received a nickname: Slice, Buckshot, The Razor, Smokehouse, Big Daddy, The Buck and Brutus, to name a few.
In 1995, a mutual friend arranged a blind date for Joe with his future wife, Debra. He arrived to pick her up late and wet, having forgotten to roll up his window before driving into the carwash. Over dinner at Don’s Steak House they discovered much in common: they were both lapsed Lutherans, they had both worked at the Free State Opera House and they could both recite large sections of “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” They decided to give it a go and were eventually married in 2002. Debra was to learn that Joe knew many more poems, which he recited to her at the kitchen counter, after a few shots of Wellers. Joe acquired two step-children when he married, Ben and Michelle. Many happy game nights, piano recitals, baseball games and basketball games followed. Eventually four grandchildren followed as well, each of them, in Joe’s eyes, absolutely extraordinary.
Joe was a big man with a big laugh and a big heart. As is fitting a driller, he leaves a big hole in the lives of those of us who loved him.
Joe was predeceased by his parents and his sister, Sondra Pence. He is survived by his wife Debra Wilson, of the home, his daughter Michelle Wilson of Vancouver, British Columbia, his son, Ben Wilson, of Lawrence, his grandchildren, Joell, Jessiah, Zylah and Zyanah, his sister Joan Anderson of Lawrence, his niece, Cindi Long of Lawrence, her husband Dennis Long, two great nephews, Nick and Carter Long of Lawrence and his nephew Jason Bogard, and his husband, Demond Adams, of Venice Beach, California.
Many thanks to the doctors and staff of Lawrence Memorial Hospital Oncology and Visiting Nurses Hospice, as well as all of Joe’s friends and family who helped Debra care for Joe in his final days.
A celebration of Joe’s life will be held on Saturday, November 11, 2023 at the White School House in Lawrence, from 4-7 p.m.
Please visit Joe’s obituary page at the Warren-McElwain Mortuary website to share your memories of Joe.
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