Vandals had poured cement into the stove and down the tub’s drain. Walls and staircase railings were kicked in. A ceiling had collapsed.
Most troubling: “White power,” die n—–” and swastikas were spray-painted on walls.
“They wrecked every room,” the couple wrote. “Nothing was spared.”
Joe is black and Pat is white. The couple married 34 years ago “at a time when you know it wasn’t real acceptable,” Pat told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
The burdens continued as they raised two biracial children in the South and then in Cincinnati. Their son committed suicide in 2010, they wrote on the GoFundMe page.
“He was treated very racist because he was a biracial young man,” the GoFundMe page says. “He was called the n-word, and other unacceptable terms by his fellow students and residents of the town. One of his teachers even called him stupid in front of the entire class. Unfortunately, with all of this negativity, we lost a wonderful young man.”
