BUFFALO, N.Y. — "When he started wearing a cowboy hat we thought it looked silly, but he loved it. We just called him 'Cowboy Joe' after that," said Joe Abad.
That's how Shea's Projectionist Joseph Heckt got his nickname.
Abad is a longtime friend and co-worker of Cowboy Joe's. We met him at the Pearl Street Brewery for a chat about his friend and mentor.
"The Shea's their projectors are pretty antique," Abad said. "They're actually out of the Tech Theatre that used to be on Main Street."
Abad added, "He kept them running. He was like a master at keeping them running."
Heckt kept himself running too, working into his 98th year. He was a behind the scenes force at theatres across Western New York.
"There's three theatres that were on Ridge Road in Lackawanna, the Franklin, the Shea's Lackawanna and the Ridge, and he worked at all of them when he was 16 years old," Abad said.
But in later years, projectionist work started to dry up. Heckt found other ways to contribute to the theatre scene, at places like North Tonawanda's Riviera Theatre and Lewiston's Artpark.
"In the seventies, when he started at Artpark, he started doing way more stagehand work, but he always kept his hands in the projectionist stuff," Abad said.
Heckt was also justly proud of his World War II military service, but didn't want any fuss. It took convincing for him to take part in a recent veterans Honor Flight.
"He didn't wanna do it, him and this other guy that was a veteran that worked at Kleinhans, and I kept telling him 'do it! Do it!' and finally they both did it before they passed," Abad said.
A veteran and an unseen lynchpin in Western New York's theatre scene, 'Cowboy Joe' Heckt passed on April 18, after a decades-long career helping to entertain and delight audiences after a live well lived.