Hailey Fuchs Photo
Joe Grate serenades the crowd.
Years ago, a bus would stop across the street from a gas station and mini-mart Joe Grate ran at Dixwell and Munson called Triangle Mobil, and little boys from Newhallville used to climb atop the back of the bus to rock it. One day, Grate, who saw that the boys needed some discipline, hopped over the fence and paddled the troublemakers. Chuckling, he remembered how the boys’ mothers later thanked him for it.
He recalled that moment Saturday, many years after he closed that business. He returned to be honored by a grateful community at the formal naming of the intersection as “Joe Grate Corner.”
With help from his son Gregory, Grate, who is now blind and partially deaf, took the stage at the naming ceremony for the corner of Dixwell Avenue and Munson Street, the land at the juncture of Dixwell and Newhallville upon which he operated his beloved gas station and a BBQ pavilion.
“You have made my life worthwhile, and I thank you for that,” Joe said. Even though he was unable to see the dozens of family members and friends who gathered to celebrate his contributions to the neighborhood, Grate told the community, “I see with my heart.”
The corner of Dixwell Avenue and Munson Street.
Nearly 800 people signed the petition to name the intersection Joe Grate Corner; that’s 550 more than the required number. According to Melissa Singleton, who spearheaded the project, if you don’t know “Mr. Joe,” you’re either too young or not from New Haven.
When Singleton was barely tall enough to play the convenience store’s Pac Man machine, she would skip over to Grate’s gas station to buy her penny candy. Years ago, Mr. Joe sponsored Singleton’s double-dutch team. Today he considers her children to be two of his seven grandkids.
Melissa Singleton and Joe Grate.
“It takes a village to raise a family, and he was always that village,” she said. Singleton told Mr. Joe, “You were my village, and I love you for that.”
Grate’s magic was his knowledge of the community, which he calls his “family.” African American doctors, ministers, business, and professional people would all gather at Grate’s gas station to discuss the state of the neighborhood. When people wanted to know about Newhallville, they went to Mr. Joe.
“I had an ear for everybody in the neighborhood. That was part of me,” Grate said.
A family man, Grate provided jobs for his brothers, sons, nephews, grandchildren, and just about anyone who needed a little support. What was truly special about Grate, people recalled, was his tireless dedication to those in greatest need. In the 1970s, when an apartment building on Orchard Street caught fire, Grate risked his life to pull a disabled man out of the burning building, said his son Gregory.
Joe Grate and Carlton Heath.
Mr. Joe’s former auto mechanic, Carlton Heath, recalled how Grate kept him out of trouble. When Heath, a self-proclaimed “fighter,” tried to defend against a robber, he was arrested. Grate showed up at the jailhouse to bail him out.
Son Gerard Grate said his father taught him “the art of giving to someone else”
Caring, Grate was also a “disciplinarian.” In his household, you had to be home by six o’clock or you would not get dinner, Gerard said. And each morning before school, the boys could hear their father’s loud footsteps outside their door. According to Gerard, his favorite words were: “I said let’s get going!”
When he opened his business on the corner of Dixwell and Munson, Grate was the only African American owner of a gas station in the city and even the state, according to Singleton.
As a young boy, Edwards remembers sleeping in the back seat of Grate’s 1957 blue and white Chevy when they drove from South Carolina up to New York back in the 1960s. Grate always kept a jar of Pepto-Bismol for his stomach just in case he felt a little queasy.
Carlton Health, Gregory Grate, Joe Grate, and Carlton McCall.
Almost every person at the event had some story or anecdote about how Mr. Joe helped them, taught them, or made them laugh. Multiple people told me that my notebook did not have enough pages for their stories. And so, on this day, the community to which Joe Grate gave so much finally gave a little something back. In posterity, Grate’s corner will forever be his.