Joe Toye is portrayed by Kirk Acevedo in "Band of Brothers". The real Joe Toye was a better leader and soldier than he's depicted to be in the series, and he spoke with a Philly/Reading, PA accent, not a Brooklyn one. Much of his story is untold in "Band of Brothers", including the fact that he broke his leg during a windy training jump on March 30, 1943. Later, when Easy Company was pinned down after running head on into the German 107 Panzerbrigade near the town of Nuenen in the Netherlands, the company commander, Dick Winters, asked for a live prisoner. Joe, who was a squad leader, left his squad behind and ventured out by himself into no-mans land, and impressively, he returned with a prisoner. Fellow Easy Company veterans all described Joe Toye as “the toughest of the tough.” He’d gotten strong from having to go to work in the coal mines. He was also an amateur boxer. Don Malarkey described him as being a great guy who always thought of others and was built like steel. “He came across like Superman,” Malarkey noted in his memoir, “a guy who had all this strength but never let it go to his head.” Frank Perconte echoed the same, stating that Toye “was a tough sonuvabitch, but he never had to go around trying to prove it.” He was also described as having a good sense of humor. Fellow soldiers recalled Toye singing Irish songs to lift the men’s spirits during some of the most trying times of the war. After losing his leg at Bastogne and returning home from the war, Joe Toye met his wife, Ellie, while recovering at a hospital in Atlantic City. They married and had four children, three boys and a girl. His youngest son, Jonathon, was born with what was likely a severe form of cerebral palsy. He was unable to walk, talk, go to the bathroom on his own, or feed himself. When he was three years old, Jonathon had to be put in a state-run home and school for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Jonathon's diagnosis hit his parents really hard. Joe and Ellie divorced in 1963. Joe remained close to his children, and he visited Jonathon almost every day in the care home until Jonathon's passing at age 32. Joe had remarried in the late 1960s to a widow named Mary Vogel and he became a devoted father to her four children as well. He passed away in 1995, a year and a half after his son Jonathon's passing. #bandofbrothers #ww2 #easycompany #WWII