Meet the wonderful Joe Liro!
Joseph Liro grew up in Western Massachusetts in a community of Polish immigrants, speaking Polish and English as his first languages. After graduating high school in 1960, he was appointed to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. During this time, he met his wife, Judith, who was a student at Colorado College. After graduating, Joe served six years in the Air Force - stationed in Dayton, Ohio, and Okinawa, Japan - as an agent in the Office of Special Investigations (intelligence and counterintelligence). In other words, he was a spy!
After leaving the Air Force, Joe studied public administration and came to Austin to work as a budget analyst and assistant city manager, as well as dabbling in business. After the failure of a company he started with a friend, he reconnected with his family in Poland and decided he wanted to learn more about them and meet them. To ensure that the Polish he would speak would not be “kitchen Polish,” Joe studied at the University of Texas at Austin. UT’s Slavic language department required the study of Russian, which Joe turned out to be pretty good at. This newfound ability for languages led him to receive grants to study and work abroad.
He taught in a magnet school in Southeastern Belarus and was later offered the position of country director in Minsk and worked for an organization that supported student-teacher exchanges between Belarus and the US. After what can be described as an eventful period of work abroad and a scare with the KGB, Joe returned to the US with very polished skills in Russian. He worked at Seminary of the Southwest for eight years and then ended up teaching Russian at Austin Community College for 20 years.
In June 2021, Joe received his Parkinson’s Disease diagnosis. He was “not a happy camper” to learn of his condition because he had already endured a lot of physical challenges. In 2018, he fell during a trip to Costa Rica and didn’t realize he had sustained a subdural hematoma. He eventually got diagnosed, had surgery, and had a stroke afterward. He spent that summer in rehab and underwent a second surgery due to an infection after the first. Then, after all of that, Joe found out that he had PD and said, “Who the hell needs it?!”
He somehow found out about Power for Parkinson’s and started going to the classes in person and was surprised by how much he enjoyed them! Joe loves people who are “pleasant and congenial.” In his words, “It’s the sense of camaraderie.” PD has made some aspects of Joe’s life difficult, but he has discovered ways to combat the challenges. He thought that he had been served as much as he could handle, but Parkinson’s has taught him that he can handle more than he thought. Joe and Judith enjoy traveling and are feeling more hopeful about getting out and doing things. Joe has been working on walking more, even embarking on “a hell of a big walk” by walking around the block twice in a week! He retired from his job as a professor in 2020 despite having really enjoyed interacting with students of all ages, describing stepping away from work as a “big loss.” Nevertheless, Joe Liro has proven that regardless of whether he is in or out of the classroom, he is a teacher to us all. Upon asking if there was advice he wanted to give to those living with PD, he said the following: “There are a lot of people in the world with PD, and by saying that, I mean you’re not alone. Be a kindred spirit to others, and you’ll find kindred spirits.”
In Joe's words, “I’ve lived more of my life using plan B than plan A. And plan B is ok.” And whether in relation to Parkinson’s Disease or other things, we too can remember that plan B is ok. Thank you for sharing your story with us Joe and for all that you bring to the PFP community!!
Joe and Judith Liro at their wedding!
Written by Meredith Cole