Joseph "Joe" Miglieri Sr.

Joseph Miglieri, Sr., (Joe). Joe is survived by his beloved partner of 30 years, Lynne Burke. He was the Loving father of Leonard (Amanda) Miglieri, Frank Miglieri, Joseph (Tanya) Miglieri, Michael Burda, & Christopher Pierce. He was Grandfather to Marcus Miglieri, Payton Miglieri, RyAnn Miglieri, Emma Burda, & Joseph Miglieri III. Loving son of the late Millianne Murphy, and the late Leonard Miglieri. Fond eldest brother of the late Emil (Late Lyn) Miglieri, JoAnn (Late Bill) Lindman, James Miglieri, Millianne Miglieri & Leonard (Lori) Miglieri. Loving uncle to several nieces and nephews. Fond & loving cousin to the Thompson Family of Minnesota. Joe always had a zest for life. If there was something fun or crazy to try, Joe was there to try it. He worked in a myriad of professions throughout his life. He worked with a traveling carnival, he detonated the fireworks at Comiskey Park, he was a Barber, & pizza delivery man. His main job was as a printing press repairman for the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times. He worked on a farm in Kewaunee, Wisconsin & often you would find Joe running down the street hollering for help because a cow or a bull was chasing him as he attempted to guide them from one field to another. He worked a business called “The Joe It Alls” with his friend Joe in Delavan, doing home repairs & maintenance, & worked with his friend Mike, a carpenter, doing construction for a short time. He later mastered Gardening & had the most amazing garden in all of Walworth County & at his winter home in Leesburg, Florida. 

He had a passion for fireworks. He sold & detonated fireworks for many years. At any given time, Joe had $10,000 worth of fireworks in his garage which his partner feared would burn the place down or she would find four or six boxes of fireworks he was selling piled in the back of her vehicle when she went to drive it. He would cover the boxes with blankets & lawn chairs to “disguise them.” Since she couldn’t lift them to remove them, she had to be his “partner in crime” & drive around with them, pray she wouldn’t have an accident & blow up. Joe purchased a $50 lawn ornament of an old canon once. To his partner’s dismay, he had the center tube bored out so that he could shoot mortars off his septic mound at his house in Sharon, Wisconsin (where he resided for 18 years) whenever someone came to visit him. (His passion is now carried on by his grandson Payton Miglieri who inherited the canon) He had a tad bit of a “pack rat” habit, especially regarding his gardening. It was normal to find five or six “dead” weedwhackers or rototillers, laying in his basement or garden shed waiting for son Frank to come & fix them. It was easier for Joe to buy new ones because he didn’t know how to fix them, so it was always left for Frank. There were always 50-100 plastic garden pots Joe piled behind his shed from the flowers he would buy each year for his garden. They had to stay there, “Just in case I start a nursery” he would say. On payday every month, Joe would wait until Lynne left then call and order $200-300 worth of new flowers for his planting “somewhere.” Joe had a 385-foot rock wall garden at his home in Sharon which his partner called the “Great Wall of Joe.” His garden wall held 15,837 rocks. Each rock was handpicked by Joe out of the farm fields around his home where the farmers would leave them for him. 

Joe and his brother Emil were mischievous, young boys and it was never a surprise when his parents would receive a phone call that Joe and Emil had to be removed from school because of their shenanigans. They made their way through just about every Catholic and public school in Chicago where Joe grew up. Joe’s father then sent Joe & Emil to Barber school to keep them out of trouble. Joe was a seven-time Horseshoe champion on the “A Run” Bar league in Walworth County with his best friends Hank and Steve, & a former member of the Beloit Horseshoe Club. He was a 42% ringer and hard to beat. His mother taught him to play scrabble as a child because Joe had trouble with spelling. He never mastered spelling, but he became a formidable opponent who was hard to beat. His idea of relaxing when he wasn’t gardening, was to sit on his bed and play all four players at scrabble by himself. He had about 30 little notebooks his partner found with his scrabble scores & “opponents” who were often his dogs, his brothers, sisters, his kids, Lynne’s sister, his cousin Fred of Minnesota & anyone else who crossed his path. He loved board games. Joe’s mother’s family was in Minnesota & he spent a great deal of time living there with his family. His & his partner would spend a month every summer by his Aunt Josie, Joe would fix her garden for her or just drive her crazy & go fishing with cousin Marty. 

His laugh was infectious. He loved to tell “mafia” stories and repeat his stories over & over to the point we would tell him, “We heard that story 5,000 times.” He was a genius at history and math. If you told Joe you were at one location, & you were traveling to another, he could mathematically tell you the exact time you would arrive at that location & he was correct the majority of the time. He often did that when asking his partner where she was & when she’d be home if she went grocery shopping. Joe’s idea of offering to help put away the groceries was to take all the junk food & cheese he would ask Lynne to buy, then retreat to the bedroom & eat it all at once til his stomach hurt. Joe and Lynne traveled and lived in an RV for three and a half years. They lived in and owned homes in Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida, and Las Vegas. Joe would spend hours trying to figure out the odds to beat the casinos at Blackjack and Keno, two games he was very good at winning. Joe bought his first house after playing poker with friends and bosses at the newspaper and saving $10,000. He once bought a house up north for him and his boys only to find out that he would lose the house because it was on land that belonged to another person. His efforts at real estate were not the best so Lynne kept him out of the house buying decisions. 

He was a major history buff. He could tell you what war was fought starting on what date, who were the generals, who won and when they ended. Much of his history was learned through the tremendous amount of westerns Joe enjoyed because book learning was not his thing. Joe & his partner rescued Bichons and Maltese dogs for 13 years & Joe would often rescue cats & name chipmunks in his yard and hand feed them. Joe became ill in 2018 and confined to facilities with epilepsy & a noxious brain injury. He suffered the brain injury in 2019 which resulted in his inability to walk or talk. He remained cognizant the majority of the time and responding appropriately to his partner and medical staff in the nursing homes and hospitals. It was not a surprise if a CNA had a key chair hanging from their pocket for Joe to put his hands in there and take it out. He was loved by many of his caregivers and made them laugh all the time. Joe was a big flirt & his nickname when he was young was “Sweetie” because he chased all the girls. Joe learned a love of sports from his dad as a child and having four brothers who often thought they were the Three Stooges, Joe would box and play football and attend baseball games with his brothers. His passion for sports as a high school track runner lasted throughout his life and was passed on to his own boys. Joe will be missed by his partner and family, and friends, but most of all, the aura that Joe exhibited when you were in his presence, of love and fun will missed most of all. 

A Celebration of Life will be held from 12:00PM until 4:00PM Saturday, May 16, 2026 at Lazarczyk Family Funeral Home 118 S. Second St. Delavan, WI 53115. In lieu of flowers, consider making a donation to the Epilepsy Foundation or the ALS Foundation in Joe’s name. 

Lazarczyk Family Funeral Homes of Delavan and Lake Geneva are proudly serving the family.