March Stories of Loss, Love and Joy

R.I.P Senator Jack Kibbie

On March 4th the erstwhile Iowa Senator John Patrick Kibbie passed away. Senator Jack Kibbie represented the Iowans of Senate District #4 and lived near Emmetsburg, Iowa. He served those Iowans, and really all of us, from 1989 until he retired from public life in 2013.

Jack was my friend. And I was his. Jack had a sensibility about him that was an interesting combination of gentleman farmer and tank commander. Because, of course, he was both in his day — a tank commander in the Korean War and recipient of the Bronze Star. And then he was a farmer all the rest of his days. He wore that tanker’s crew cut his entire life, so far as I know. It just became a little more silver as the years crept along.

I will miss Jack immensely. As will we all, even if others did not know him as I did. Jack, as one might expect, served on the Agriculture Committee and the Veterans Affairs Committee. He was a champion of family farmers and veterans as well as public education and small-town Iowa. Jack was once honored as the “Father” of Iowa’s Community Colleges and for good reason, as he was singularly their greatest ally and advocate in the Iowa Legislature.

There are many other things to list among Jack’s accolades and accomplishments. I say that because you all, my readers, may know or remember something about Senator Kibbie that I have not shared here. When I sat down to write this, I decided to write here only the things that I remembered about Jack, things that he told me or things that his family and friends shared with me. I have a reason for choosing to do this in this way but that’s between me and Jack. Any error or omission in my writing is a product of either my not remembering something or perhaps never having known it in the first place. It would not be the first time that I learned something surprising about Jack after knowing him for a long time. He was not a bragger.

The greatest among Jack’s achievements was that he was deeply in love with his wife Kay. Every year she served as Jack’s clerk in the Iowa Senate, and obviously he depended on her, but you could also see in them that they just never wanted to be apart. I think Kay enjoyed the years when Jack served as the President of the Iowa Senate. I daresay she appreciated the larger desk and office. Most importantly though, she was with Jack, and he with her, always.

Last night when I received a message notification on my phone in the early morning hours it felt like it usually does when the phone pings at 3:00 a.m. It constricted my throat and pushed up my heartbeat. The message was from my long-time friend Linus Solberg, a farmer and County Supervisor in Palo Alto County, and dear friend to Jack. He shared the news with me. We exchanged condolences and a few kind words about Jack and towards each other. Love you Linus, my friend, always.

I have received a lot of those calls and messages in the month of March. Just a few years ago the call was about my brother Steve Crabtree, who passed away on March 2nd. My mother, Elsie Crabtree, passed away on March 31st some years before that. And 26 years ago tomorrow the phone rang as I was driving and before I even picked up, I knew that my father, Ted Crabtree, had passed away — March 6, 1999.

One might conclude that there is not much joy in March for John Crabtree. But you’d be wrong to think that. First, my daughter Abby Crabtree, who means the entire world to me, was born on March 26th. I receive joy and love from that March life-event every single day of my life. I loved my mother unequivocally; my memories of her life do not center on March 31st. I love all of my brothers and sisters, those we’ve lost and those that are still with me. Joy and love abound in my life, in March and in every month.

About a week before my father passed, we were in the hospital and the doctors told us that there was nothing they could do. But that if Ted wanted to go home to spend his final days there, with Hospice care, they were happy to make that happen. I asked him what he wanted to do. “I want to go home,” he said. I replied, “you know that means you can’t come back?” He said, “I want to go home.”

And we did. I drove him in his red & white Chevy pickup from Mercy Hospital in Mason City, Iowa to our farm near Dougherty. We were the first to arrive and then I realized that I had not made arrangements for a wheelchair. And my father lacked the strength to stand. We pondered for a moment, he smiled at me, I said, “there’s nothing for it” and picked him up and carried him into the house.

Ted was wasting away by that time, but he was still a full-grown man. Kind of like that old ad from Boys Town, “he ain’t heavy, he’s my father.” I have no words for how difficult it was to carry my father into my boyhood home with the thoughts echoing in my head that 35 years earlier he had driven me home from the very same hospital to the very same farm and carried me into the house just a day or two after I was born.

It is a complete mystery to me how something so agonizingly sad was turned around completely when I set my father down in his bed and he looked at me and the tears on my face and reached up, smiled, and gently patted my cheek. Even now, the memory of feeling that my heart might burst as I carried him across the lawn recedes a bit with each passing year. But the enveloping love and joy I felt when he smiled and touched my face, that I remember as if it happened just moments ago. Love and joy abound in March.

I speak and write often about my path in life. I have pledged to those that I love most — Abby, Lisa, my family, my friends — that I will love you every day of my life. That I will write the story of my life and make it the best story in the world. That I will strive to do those things each day, for all my days, and keep love in my heart and give it away freely, especially to those I love most. And that I will seek joy in all things.

So where is the love and joy in Jack’s passing? When Linus and I were chatting last night, I asked him how old Jack was when he passed. He was 95. And then Linus told me about how Jack died. It seems he went out dancing with family and friends. He fell, hit his head and a little later he succumbed to the injury.

And right there is the joy of Jack Kibbie. Consider the story that Jack wrote for his life. Imagine living 95 years and experiencing all that he did and accomplishing all that he accomplished and spending every day possible with the love of your life. And then to go out dancing with family and friends. We should all hope that we can write our life stories with even a fraction of that much love and joy.

Don’t be sad for Jack. Don’t be sad for me.

Jack, that was one hell of a life story you lived. And one hell of a closing chapter. Well written, old friend, and nicely done. Godspeed to you Jack. I will miss you, we all will. Joy and love to you, your family and all who loved you. Until we meet again… john