(For Jack Stewart Kibbe, 8 October 1929 – 5 June, 2009)
This isn’t one of Michael’s pithy, one paragraph obits, sorry. And it seems almost cruel, I’ll grant, to wake the blog from its cryogenic sleep to post of yet another death, but my father was a longtime (though silent) fan. He died at 79 a few Fridays ago, on my birthday (make that nearer 79.6575 – he was an engineer, after all … ). While a private man, I think he’d graciously accept this post and the regard of people he knew of only by association, through this site.
His was a rich and varied, well-lived life. The only son of a Fish & Wildlife fish cultuary, Jack was born in Deadwood, South Dakota, and lived with his parents, Ted & Myrtle across the upper midwest and later Albuquerque. As a young man he toyed with becoming a marine biologist but pursued engineering; after serving in Korea as a B29 mechanic, he went to Venezuela still a young man to play with big toys – maintaining ore trains for U.S. Steel’s Orinoco Mining Company – and to explore a wild, young country. His wife, Betty, intrepidly brought the 3-month-old me from Albuquerque by herself to join him there, and 15 months later came a second son, Doug.
He freely shared this great adventure with us, in whom he instilled his fierce honor and abundant curiosity. He outfitted an army-surplus Willys jeep with a hard top for cargo and long-range gas tanks and we made expeditions grand and small. Both he and Betty were licensed to pilot a single-engine plane they co-owned with another couple, in which we flew to Angel Falls and remote fishing holes, landing many times on mere dirt strips or even open fields. Generating uncountable sweet stories, we stayed there 20+ years, during which time he took charge of building the world’s first non-polluting, natural gas, iron-ore-reducing plant.
He put me through Harvard, Doug through Embry-Riddle Aeronautical and into the Air Force, followed our careers and life-choices assiduously. He worked long and hard and with gusto, and retired in Albuquerque (kind of without meaning to) before 55. Traveled with Betty from there to many places, such as here for our wedding, to Moscow and the Pacific Line Islands, and plenty of places in between; before health issues reduced his roaming radius, but even then he spent most of his days out and about when he could.
The last 15 years or so they enjoyed a rambling adobe (once owned by Opus’ creator, Berkeley Breathed) in the western foothills of the Sandias, where Jack ate his breakfast every day in sight of the mountains and the hummingbirds. That house was full of his tinkerings, from tables built of picture frames, hand tools made from parts of other tools, and various a vista plumbing and wiring projects – just cutting to the chase, working within his diminishing physical limits using the undiminished mental creativity of a natural-born engineer. An inveterate planner, he even laid out in a seven-page letter every detail of what to do after his death — 9 years before it occurred; not least amongst what he left us.
From youth to death, the world fascinated him. Beside his chair were many books on insects and birds, elsewhere on marine life – he’d snorkeled many of the world’s oceans in their extensive travels. Binoculars and a telescope were everywhere, from windowsills to gloveboxes, be it for wildlife or weather, hot air balloons in the valley or fighter jets at the airport. He knew how stuff worked, or worked on finding out. He probably even knew more at a cell-tissue-level about his maladies than he let on to us …
His wasn’t an easy death, but he accepted it unflinchingly, having first set foot on that long, slow slope many years before we knew he’d begun. Perhaps even he was taken by surprise at the end by the swiftness, but we take that as a mercy. By a gift of grace we were given to be there, made the most of it; were open and generous with each other, released him with clarity and love. Goodbye, dad, and godspeed. Thank you for the gifts of my life and of your self. I immensely love you.
