The sea has figured strongly in Joseph Waiksnis’s life and heritage. Joseph was born in January 1963 at St. Albans Naval Hospital in Queens, New York. The grandson of a sailor who bought a mysterious house in Pennsylvania, Joseph had an idyllic childhood on Long Island with his mother and stepfather. He did not have much contact with his grandfather until a poignant reunion at his grandfather’s deathbed, the elderly gentleman expressing his wish that Joseph should inherit his house.

A hard-working man, Joseph married his wife Dawn, and the couple began to build a middle-class life together in the small town in Pennsylvania where his grandfather had lived for many years. The pair considered joining the Navy Reserves together, yet in the end only Dawn signed up for duty. Meanwhile, Joseph worked at his job and, in his spare time, labored to restore the multi-level house of his grandfather, John De Wolff, as well as its outlying building where his grandfather’s boats were stored.

Fate intervened with the couple’s happy plans, however, when inordinate municipal interest in Joseph and especially his centrally located, multi-purpose house made him the subject of more contact with local police than he cared to have. One night while driving back to Pennsylvania from visiting Dawn in New York, the police stopped him on a country road just outside of town . . .

Joseph has a flair for story-telling combined with the moral conviction to insist that a man is innocent until proven guilty in a fair manner. Between fighting for his and his family’s good name, Joseph has been a devoted son to his parents and a devoted father to his son. He lives with his parents and son on Long Island and, true to his heritage, Joseph still enjoys boating and fishing.