Former Emmaus mayor, state rep was a local ‘legend’
HARRISBURG – Joseph Zeller, a Depression-era bootlegger in his youth, a Navy sailor in war and a Pennsylvania lawmaker in adulthood, died Wednesday at his Lowhill Township home. He was 100.
Zeller was the last Democrat to represent the 134th legislative District in Lehigh County. He did so from 1971 to 1980, after serving as an Emmaus councilman and mayor.
His death came a few months after the House of Representatives feted Zeller in Harrisburg for his public service as a lawmaker, patriotic community activist and veteran of the Korean and Second World wars.
“He was a legend in Lehigh Valley political circles,” said Rep. Pete Schweyer, D-Allentown. “He was a World War II vet who cared about the spirit of patriotism in the most positive way you can imagine. He was a guy who cared for the community and did the job for all the right reasons and never became rich. My heart goes out to his family.”
Zeller lived a life touched by some of the world's most memorable events of the 20th century.
Zeller was born Sept. 19, 1918, in Godly, Ill., where his father ran a tavern while espousing a deep Catholic faith. He was the second youngest of six children, one of whom died in the Spanish flu pandemic. His mother died when Zeller was 11 — the year the Great Depression set in.
Four years later, his father shipped him and his younger brother to an aunt's farm in southern Indiana. There, he plowed fields and planted and cultivated 40 acres of corn his aunt used to make bootleg whisky during Prohibition. After federal agents raided the farm, Zeller, then 18, and his brother fled to Chicago by hitching a ride on furniture truck.
In the Windy City, Zeller, with no high school education, boxed, sold vacuum cleaners and worked in restaurants. By 1938, he had moved to Wisconsin, where he began training to be an electrician.
When World War II started, Zeller entered the Navy, earning the rank of aviation electric mate chief. He served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ranger CV-4.
After the war, Zeller settled in Emmaus in 1948. But not for long. The Navy recalled him during the Korean War, 1950 to 1953.
When that war ended, he returned to Emmaus and used the GI Bill to earn an electrical engineering degree from Penn State University.
“Where you're raised where you have to shift for yourself and nobody's giving you anything, you had to go on your own,” Zeller said in a 1990 Morning Call interview. “I had no mother to go to and get warmed and loved and all that. You had to think and figure out what you wanted to do and wanted to get. It also made you respect life.”
That philosophy served him in politics. He was a fiscally and socially conservative Democrat in a Republican-dominated rural community that was experiencing its postwar suburban boom.
In 1954, Zeller founded the Emmaus Taxpayers League to fight against sprawl. Six years later, he was elected to borough council. During his tenure, he was fired from his job as an electrician when he publicly blamed his employer for shoddy work on the borough sewer system. His tenure as mayor, beginning in 1965, was just as eventful. He turned in a Catholic priest for operating an illegal bingo game for large cash prizes.
His civic involvement stretched beyond the borough's border as he took a leading role in fighting to keep Allentown from moving the Soldiers and Sailors Monument from downtown to the West End.
The bold, sometimes controversial stances endeared him to a majority of voters who would elect him to the Legislature. In Harrisburg, he got into personal spats with other lawmakers, fought to preserve gun rights and outlaw abortion. He also was known for trying to cut government red tape, plot Interstate 78's route and stop the construction of a dam in the county.
Upon his retirement from the Legislature, Zeller moved to New Tripoli in Lynn Township, where he became active in the agriculture community as a beekeeper and started another antitax group against Northwestern Lehigh School District's plans to build a middle school.
He also was a leading proponent and supporter of Flag Day and July 4 ceremonies and veterans' affairs through his involvement with the Brig. Gen. Anna Mae V. McCabe Hays VFW Post 12099 in Allentown and Liberty Bell Museum of Allentown.
Zeller is survived by Ann Wertman, his partner of more than 40 years; and three daughters, Brenda, Laura and Margaret, and five grandchildren from his earlier marriage to Marjorie Lawless Zeller.
A private funeral service and burial will be at Fort Indiantown Gap National Cemetery.
Contributions in Zeller's memory can be made to VFW Post 12099 of Allentown or historic Liberty Bell Museum of Allentown, care of Keller Funeral Home Inc., PO Box 52, Fogelsville, PA 18051.