Joseph Allen Cowart, Jr. (98 years old), passed away peacefully on August 14, 2026. Joe was born on February 24, 1928, as a fourth generation Cocoa, FL, resident, the eldest son of Joseph Allen Cowart and Catherine Belle King. As an enthusiastic founding member of the Boy Scouts in Cocoa, he earned the rank of Eagle Scout within a mere two years at the age of 13. He pledged that ‘on his honor, he would do his best to do his duty’ – and he did.
A passionate scholar, Joe Cowart never missed a single day of school and, in 1946, graduated from Cocoa High School as the class president and valedictorian. Within four grueling years, as the youngest in the class at 22 years of age, Joe graduated as valedictorian of the University of Florida’s College of Law. He was immediately recruited to one of the largest and most prestigious Florida law firms, where he began a career practice of establishing and improving systems wherever he worked. Cowart excelled and was admitted to practice law in the State of Florida, as well as in the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Military Appeals.
In 1955, he married Mary Evelyn Huett and relocated to Washington, D.C., to serve as a Judge Advocate for the U.S. Air Force and on special assignment to the Pentagon. The military locked their offices at 5 p.m. and on weekends, forcing Joe to find other pursuits, which led to a deep delve into the study of the ‘War between the States’, reading, visiting, and diagraming battlefields throughout the area.
Upon completion of his military service in 1957, Captain Joe Cowart briefly served as Assistant Attorney General at Tallahassee, FL before choosing to return to his hometown of Cocoa to practice law and raise four daughters and a son. By 1965, he was appointed as one of the two judges to the Court of Record for Brevard County, which later became a Circuit Court in 1973. Joe Cowart also served as their Administrative Judge, stream-lining and standardizing every interaction between the court and lawyers, police, clerks of court, witnesses, and jurors in his extensive Administrative Orders and Manual of Court Procedures.
He was highly regarded for his extraordinary memory and mental capacity, his drive, common sense, knowledge of the law, fairness on the bench, and discernment. He was a mentor to many fellow lawyers and judges.
In 1980, Joe Cowart was appointed to the newly formed Fifth District Court of Appeal, where he studied the law deeply, pondered, and wrote many eloquent opinions and reasoned dissents, which continue to have an impact on the law to this day, long after his retirement in 1993.
On becoming a judge, Joe swore to, with the help of God, ‘support, protect, and defend the Constitution and Government of the United States and the State of Florida’ and that he would ‘well and faithfully perform the duties of Judge’ – and he did.
It would be an understatement to say that Joe Cowart was an avid genealogist. He was that, yet his obsession grew far beyond the bounds of his own family’s history, which he documented to their earliest American arrival dates in the 1600s. Joe published 85 books on various family lines and county indexes and had over 175,000 persons in his database, which required thousands of research hours in cemeteries, dusty court clerk offices, random family reunions, extensive correspondence, ordering microfiche reels, and copying ancient records, particularly throughout western North Carolina and Georgia.
It would also be an understatement to say that Joe Cowart was a modest man who did not like ceremony or pretentiousness. He wanted no funeral, and he would not approve of this eulogy that praises him. He did not call himself “Judge” and preferred that others didn’t either. Outside of the court, he wore Levi jeans and was a rather down-to-earth country boy. While Joe was comfortable and accomplished with law books, he was equally so on a tractor clearing and grading land, putting up fences, herding cattle, cleaning rifles, welding a new trailer together, tending beehives, or rebuilding antique gas engines. He was a voracious reader, enjoying the complete works of Shakespeare, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Patrick O’Brian. Joe often memorized and quoted poetry, likely from Poe, Frost, or Service. He enjoyed a good joke, a John Wayne movie, or a ballad sung by Marty Robbins. Joe was a life-long member of First Baptist Church of Cocoa. He respectfully talked with people from all walks of life and nations, enjoying chats with road workers in Ireland as well as missionaries in Mexico. Joe Cowart was a generous man.
He is predeceased by his wife, father, mother, sister Ora Mae Zuhlke, brother John Kimzie Cowart Sr., beloved son Joseph Allen Cowart III, and eldest grandchild James Allen Lutz. He is survived by his daughters, DeLys Hathcock (Michael), Kathryn Paulk (George), Penny Lutz (Mark), and Eugenia Fadely (Mark); youngest brother, Franklin Warren Cowart; and nine grandchildren and eighteen great-grandchildren.
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