Joseph Badame and his wife, Phyliss returned home from two years in the Peace Corps in Tunisia to their hometown of Camden, New Jersey in the early 1970’s to a nation riven with civil unrest and uncertainly.
Perhaps it was their experience with poverty and deprivation in North Africa that spurred them to become survivalists:
“Phyliss decided that we needed to prepare,” Badame said.
Moving from Camden to Medford N.J., Joseph, an architectural engineer, spent the next 45 years building a sprawling home, big enough to accommodate relatives (who never showed much interest) and stocking it with 80 barrels of dried foodstuffs to feed them all in times of economic crisis or war.
The couple wanted to be ready...not for doomsday, but just in case.
“I’d say we’re more like Boy Scouts. Being prepared.” He told The Post.
But the crisis never came, and, in 2005 Phyliss suffered a debilitating stroke. In 2013 she passed away. Joseph, because we live in America, was stuck with a mountain of medical bills and is now losing his home.
At the estate sale, one day after Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Joseph met Victoria Barber, a Puerto Rican native who had come with her husband and their food truck to the auction.
Victoria had just started a fund to help feed family members back home and Joseph was happy to kick in $100, but he also had a few other items to contribute… dried rice, chocolate and pancake mixes and other slow to perish items.
“Members of the local police department and a high school soccer team helped carry the supplies out of the basement, and the barrels were repacked so that each contained a variety of dried goods.
By Wednesday, 40 of Badame’s barrels were on wooden pallets, covered in plastic wrap, waiting to be delivered to Puerto Rico on a Delta Air Lines flight out of Newark. Barber said they plan to deliver the remaining 40 barrels by ship.”
Victoria, who lost her father when she was young, says she can never repay Joseph for helping her hometown, but she is doing her best... Joseph has moved into a 300 square foot trailer on her and her husband’s property.
“I gained a dad out of all this,” she said.