“Saint Joseph” Premiere at the Garden State Film Festival

Joe Albright was known to Trentonians in his neighborhood as “bird man” or “the cat guy,” because of his daily ritual of feeding pigeons, squirrels and stray cats he encountered as he made his way to work at the New Jersey State House as a reporter and columnist for the Hudson County “Jersey Journal.” He was known to reporters, statehouse staffers, governors and senators as ‘Saint Joseph” or “Jersey Joe” for the same reasons—feeding the animals — but add to that the fact that after he fed the creatures, he blessed them with the sign of the cross. Some called Joe “The Saint Frances of the statehouse,” referring to Saint Francis of Assisi, a revered icon of the Catholic Church who was known as the patron saint of pets animals and was Joe Albright’s favorite saint. Albright began his legendary career freelancing as a sportswriter at the Trentonian, The Star-Ledger, and The Newark Evening News, among others, when he was still in high school! After a four-year stint in the Navy during the Korean War, he had several jobs around the country before settling in at the Hudson County Jersey Journal in 1964 as a statehouse reporter and columnist, the job he held until May 5, 2022, the day he died at age 93.

Saint Joseph is a project of the Corporation for New Jersey Local Media. Saint Joseph will premiere Saturday, March 25 in a block of six short films starting at 2:45 at the Berkeley Continental ballroom at the Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel, Asbury Park. For more information on screening times and locations, visit https://www.gsff.org/.