by David Kubicek
My brother, John, passed away on December 19, 2022, after a nine-month battle with cancer.
Those of you who are regular visitors to this blog know that he has figured prominently in several posts. And no doubt he will figure prominently in posts yet to be written.
John was many things.
He was a reader. He loved reading on a wide variety of topics, both fiction and nonfiction. When he read fiction, he would read a single author’s body of work from beginning to end. When he told me that he was reading Ernest Hemingway, I cautioned him that reading so much Hemingway all at once might cause permanent brain damage. But he took the risk.
He was a science whiz. In high school he won a national science competition for building an apparatus to create the building blocks of life (and, like any self-respecting mad scientist, he blew up his first apparatus, for which he was rewarded with 144 stitches). The prize was a two-week trip to London with other high school students who had won in other categories. The UNL chemistry department gave him lab space before he even took his first class.
He was a college dropout. For John, that wasn’t a bad thing. He was a chemistry major, but he left college after two years, he told me, because with a science major he had to focus in on one topic, but his interests spanned many topics. It was his curiosity about everything that led him to leave college. In other words, he left college to get a general education. He told me at the time that his ideal job would be to be paid to read.
But he settled for the next best thing–working in a bookstore. Jim McKee, co-owner of Lee Booksellers, hired him to manage the bookstore’s Omaha location. But that didn’t last long. John tired of the daily commute and the responsibilities of being a manager. McKee’s wife and co-owner of Lee Booksellers, Linda Hillegass (daughter of Cliffs Notes founder Cliff Hillegass) worked for the Lincoln City Libraries. She landed John a job at the main library downtown, where he spent the rest of his life cataloguing books and other materials the library acquired. This also kept him on top of the latest books being published, which complemented his need to read.
John got into computers very early. He bought a top-of-the line IBM computer with a whopping five-megabyte hard drive. He even let me use it to ghost write a book for Midgard Press, the subsidy division of Media Publishing. He wrote at least one short computer program (and maybe more; I don’t know) to help the Lincoln City Libraries with their cataloging work. When he was still at UNL, he was so proud of his ability to navigate cyberspace that he (jokingly) asked if there were any classes I’d like to take–he would put my name on the roster. Once, he was with me when I stopped in to see a friend. My friend wasn’t ready yet, so we hung out with his wife in the living room. John knew the wife from riding the bus with her, but he didn’t know her that well. He started to tell her about how he had offered to sign me up for UNL classes “off the books.” I interrupted him before he got too far along in his confession and said: “John, did you know that Marilyn is an attorney in the Attorney General’s office?”
John had an offbeat sense of humor. He was a devout fan of Monty Python, which could account for this personality trait (or it could be some slight brain damage from reading too much Hemingway all at once). For instance, after a meal at a restaurant, he would leave a wallet-size photo of a Capuchin monkey along with his tip. On the back of the photo, he would write: “Hi! I’m Isaac.” At my wedding reception, John, along with other guests–some in the wedding party and some not–participated in the age-old ritual of kidnapping the bride. Basically, they went through stores making a ruckus. Customers and salespeople would stare at this motley crew, some in tuxedos and others not, led by a bride going loudly through the store. John, in his tuxedo, would bring up the rear. He made calming motions with his hands and said to the onlookers: “Don’t worry. They’re not dangerous. I’m their doctor, and we’re on an outing.” As he got older, and his hair was thinning, John would tell people: “I still have all of my hair. I keep most of it in a box on my dresser.”
Although John had gotten a driver’s license when he was 16, he owned, I think, only one car early in his life. After that, he borrowed our dad’s car when he had to travel long distances (usually out of town). Locally, he chose to ride the bus or to walk where he needed to go. He walked a lot. When my son, Sean, was born, he walked from his apartment to St. Elizabeth Hospital (a good distance away), stopping at a shop on the way to pick up sandwiches. Baby Sean couldn’t eat any, but Cheryl and I enjoyed them.
When John was in his mid-teens, he got a shortwave radio, which could pick up more distant stations than conventional radio (think of it as primitive internet without the video). It could also pick up CB transmissions from truckers. Our New Year’s Eve celebration consisted of listening to these CBers talk back and forth. As the evening wore on, their banter got funnier, perhaps encouraged by a little alcohol consumption. As midnight approached John would tune in the station for the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. It sounded like a drum beating at the rate of one beat per second. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, it would add one second, which was heard as two beats in rapid succession. That–along with sipping Cokes and eating a few chips–was our New Year’s Eve ritual. Yeah, we were party animals.
Speaking of parties, John told me of an all-nighter he and some of his friends had pulled. What did they do at this all-nighter? Did they drink? Smoke a little weed? Maybe drive around town mooning unsuspecting bystanders? Nope. None of those. They spent the whole night discussing mathematics.
John was generous. Cheryl and I had spent most of our money on our wedding and reception, so our honeymoon was to consist of one night at the Cornhusker Hotel in downtown Lincoln. At the beginning of the reception, John gave me an envelope. I tossed it in the basket with the other cards to be opened with the presents when we returned from our honeymoon. John fished it out of the basket and insisted that I open it immediately. It was a card informing us that he had extended our honeymoon at the Cornhusker by five days and five nights.
John collaborated with me on two short stories and one novel. The two short stories were written and will be in my new collection to be published in 2023. Unfortunately, the novel never got past the planning stage. He was also my scientific consultant for my novel In Human Form. He told me the process he would use for scientifically studying a humanoid robot–in Part III of the novel–and gave me the names and functions of instruments and equipment that the scientists would use to study my android.
There are lots of other memories, some of which I wrote about in previous
blog posts. There was the time he helped me fake a UFO photo, the time we created a minor controversy during a game of Celebrity Taboo, the time he helped me with the polynomial part of a mathematics review guide I was writing for Cliffs Notes, the time we played rock music backwards to look for Satanic messages, and the time John and I and his friend, Maureen–who remained his friend for life–went to see Halley’s Comet on its once-every-76-year return in early 1987.
John was preceded in death by his parents, Charles and Lois Kubicek, nephew Kevin Coffey and sister-in-law Cheryl Kubicek. He leaves behind his lifetime companion Maureen Hutfless, a brother (me), sister Maxine (and brother-in-law Ray) Coffey, nephews Sean Kubicek and Chris (and niece-in-law Amy) Coffey, and grandnieces Violet and Willow Coffey. And many, many friends and colleagues.
We all will miss him.