Joseph Bartash, 93, publisher

IT'S GOT TO BE TOUGH on a school kid to come home from a hard day of book learning to find nobody home.

According to one infamous family story, when Joseph Bartash arrived home one fateful day, he found the house abandoned and the family gone.

And they hadn't even left a forwarding address. That's how hard life was for Joe, whose family was very poor and continually on the move. In fact, he attended four high schools.

His father, Sam, a tailor, and his mother, Mollie, raised five children as well as five nieces and nephews. They were immigrants from Ukraine and spoke Yiddish. Joe was the first in his family to speak English.

In his youth, Joe looked like such a failure in life that the parents of his future wife, Lillian Weinstein, objected to the union. He had no education, no skills and no future, they figured.

But Joe had something else - intelligence, drive and determination - and he went on to found several weekly newspapers and a printing company with multimillion-dollar sales, and to win numerous honors for his tireless promotion of his home neighborhood, Southwest Philadelphia.

Joe died Friday at the age of 93.

His wife, whom he married in November 1938, preceded him in death by three weeks. He had diligently cared for her until the end.

Joe was born in Philadelphia on the Fourth of July in 1914, and he never lost sight of the promise of this country.

But he had an early tendency to get into businesses he was ill-prepared for. After World War II, for instance, he opened a gas station, but since he knew nothing about cars, customers had to change their own oil.

And after he opened his first newspaper, he was so timid he had to send his wife into a business to sell their first ad.

But he soon got a grip. And he hit upon a winning formula for his newspapers: Print the good news, minimize the bad.

His first newspaper was the Southwest Globe Times, which he started in 1946. It remained the voice of Southwest Philadelphia for the next 55 years.

Since he was as ignorant of publishing as he was of cars, Joe decided he needed something different to succeed in the newspaper business. That was when he made it his policy to emphasize the good things going on in his community.

He applied the same formula to subsequent weekly newspapers he started: the University City News, the Upper Darby Telegraph, the Point Breeze Times and The Sentinel.

The Sentinel was started in 1995 to serve the Rittenhouse Square and Fitler Square neighborhoods of Center City.

In 1952, he started the Bartash Printing Co. His grandson, Michael Simon, became president in later years and guided it to become a company that today employs 300 people and has $43 million in sales.

Joe founded and became the first president of the Southwest Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.

In March 1982, Joe was honored by Philadelphia City Council with a citation that stated that the Southwest Globe Times "serves as a sounding board for neighborhood thought and opinion, and as an ongoing bulletin announcing events for the schools, churches, sports teams and community groups."

Joe remained publisher of the Globe until 2004, when he sold the name to the Southwest Community Development Corp. in the hope that its legacy would continue.

"Joe never felt he had completed everything that he had set out to do," his family said.

"He was always finding new ways to promote the love he had for Philadelphia. His cantankerous humor and energy will be missed by all."

He is survived by a daughter, Bonnie; a son, David; three other grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Services: Were private.

Burial was in Roosevelt Memorial Park. *