Our individual lives, so precious to us, are brief and then gone, like snow on the water, vanished utterly with barely a trace left behind. Those few throughout history who are remembered are either the very good or the very bad, and even these are often misremembered.
Now, more than ever, we need to connect with those who went before us, role models and heroes, those who might help show us a way forward. We need guidance in this time of incomprehensible challenge.
I might consider the life of Martin Luther King, or John Lewis, or more contemporarily, Cory Booker and a handful of other fighters, but I am going to look more locally.
I want to connect to Josephine Del Deo.
I have written before about her many accomplishments (“Josephine Del Deo, by Your Side,” Aug. 17, 2023), including being instrumental in the creation of the Cape Cod National Seashore; saving the Heritage Museum (now our public library); fighting for high-quality education locally and at Cape Cod Tech; helping her husband, Salvatore, to create the Fine Arts Work Center; co-founding a local food co-op; leading the Provincetown Symphony Society; starting a local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union; and campaigning for civil rights, nuclear disarmament, and other liberal causes.
We take all these for granted now (especially the Seashore) and overlook the context in which they were achieved. It is easy to forget that none was a foregone conclusion, that there was considerable resistance to each, and that they were not easily accomplished. It took grit and determination; it took a fighter.
Another consideration, especially for those of us who jealously guard our private lives and pursuits: any one of these causes could dominate a life to the exclusion of all else. Yet Josephine was also a wife and mother and a partner in a successful restaurant, not to mention a writer of poetry, essays, a biography, and a treatise on the Province Lands. Oh, yes, and she was a woman in a time of patriarchy.
Who was this person and where did her determination come from? Perhaps it had a genetic component: her husband, Salvatore, says she was a descendant of Henry Ward Beecher, the abolitionist. She was university-educated, not that common for women in the first half of the 20th century. (She refused to join a sorority at St. Lawrence University when she discovered that it would not admit her Jewish friend.) But her idealism, activism, and love of Provincetown defy explanation.
Josephine Couch came to Provincetown exactly 75 years ago because of a pair of sandals. She had been teaching crafts and resilience to children of color in Philadelphia but challenged the bureaucracy and was fired. Before she left, she noticed a colleague’s unique sandals and asked where she had gotten them. The answer: Provincetown.
Upon arriving here, she exclaimed, “This is it.” She opened a weaving shop where Café Heaven is now but soon got involved in the adjoining boatyard and quickly learned to operate a winch and other particulars. Weaving and winching, she became part of the community. Not long afterward, Harry Kemp told his friend Sal, “I have met the woman you are going to marry.” And they did, just months after meeting. Together, they made a lasting impression on this town.
It’s said that the only lasting good we do is by example, and Josephine’s gives us a needed dose of inspiration. This year, there is a move to dedicate the Old Colony Nature Trail to her, and the Provincetown Conservation Trust, along with the town’s open space committee (disclaimer: I am a member of both), wants to purchase a parcel adjacent to the trail as the Josephine Del Deo Memorial Woodland.
This land is valuable for its wildlife potential as well as its capacity to provide passive recreation — both priorities of Josephine’s. People in town will be hearing about numerous opportunities to donate to the cause. There will be readings and dinners and celebrations of all sorts.
There is a need for financial assistance for this project, but the greater need is to remind ourselves that there is a little bit of Josephine in each of us.
