Pat Kayl

Mr. Kayl swears like a sailor.

He drinks beer with numerous buddies, hisses, throws erasers at students, and sometimes - absorbed in his own consuming thoughts - grunts at me in the GICC hallway as if I am nothing but a pesky housefly. Usually I let this pass. After all, I've known Pat Kayl nearly all my life and am accustomed to the way he turns off the world to focus solely on the dilemma of the leak in the ceiling of the old gym. Or the leak in the cafeteria. Or the leak in the second floor art room.

Pat and Julie, November 2017

Just one time do I let him have it.

"Hey!" I snap. "Is it too much trouble to look me in the eye and be nice for once?"

Immediately he stops. I see the bewilderment and the way his eyes finally focus and adapt to his present surroundings.

"I'm so sorry," he apologizes, horrified by his behavior. "Don't know how in the world I didn't see you."

Of course he doesn't. Pat Kayl is our absent-minded professor. If he stares off into space during the middle of a chemistry lecture, you wait patiently for him to return - he always does. If he loops his right arm over the top of his head to mindlessly scratch his left ear, it means he's misplaced either his coffee cup or a sophomore boy with glasses.

And it's a complete myth that Mr. Kayl ever wears a pocket protector. Why else would his shirt, threadbare and half tucked, be stained with ink, avocado dip and sodium thiosulfate?

I meet Mr. Kayl for the first time at Central Catholic High School when I am a nervous 16-year-old. My family has just moved from Denver to Grand Island, Nebraska - a strange, foreign place my siblings and I have never even heard of. That first day of school on a warm September morning, petrified and homesick for Denver, I am introduced to Mr. Kayl and learn that he will be my advisor. In spite of my misery, I nearly snort. This shy, skinny man-boy masquerading as a science teacher is my moral authority?

Mr. Kayl, 1972

On that inauspicious day, I am not to know that Pat and his elfin wife Julie, a GICC English teacher, will be not only my mentors but my best friends for the next 46 years. In fact, I only feel a little sorry for Mr. Kayl. Father Hoelck one day has to rescue him from the ornery senior boys who manhandle and drag him into the boys' bathroom to give him a dousing bath. Mr. Kayl only laughs. He loves his students, and they love him. Those ornery boys will bear hug Pat at their 30 and 40 year reunions, and kids like Don Leifeld and Dick Smith will become his devoted and life long friends.

When I return to GICC after college to teach in 1977, Pat and Julie take me under their wing and show me the ropes. Their beautiful boy Eric is 8-years-old, and Julie is weeks away from delivering John. A few years later their only daughter Andrea - an enchanting, dark-haired infant with big dark eyes like her brothers - is born.

When I meet and marry John Howard, the school's new social studies teacher, Pat is in our wedding, and he and Julie - along with our other dearest friends Hugh and Fran Brandon - become our son Kenny's godparents. We rely on Pat for so much.

At Grand Island Central Catholic, he's the go-to guy for anything and everything. Often he disappears from class after a frantic call from the office.

"Mr. Kayl!" Sister Mary Leo, shrieks through the P.A. system. "The furnace just gave out!"

Whatever the problem, Pat's the man to fix it. And it's not just our broken down old heating system or the falling tiles in the gym or the sagging roof over the lobby. All of us call on Pat for help. Every Husker Harvest Days, he's in his element erecting buildings for our school food stands. For years he's the prom sponsor and helps construct mini-bridges or promenades transforming the old gym into a magical wonderland. He's the only guy who knows how to operate the ancient sound system during school musicals and graduations and spring concerts.

As well, John and I and all his friends rely on his help. One summer he repairs the wood floors in our dining room. Tommy, our nine-year-old son, sits cross-legged with his chin in fists fascinated by Pat's careful and precise alignments of every floor board.

"Man," Tommy tells us later. "Mr. Kayl knows ten different ways to say SH__T," he shakes his head in wonder.

Pat's classroom is a disaster - a hoarder's paradise. Twenty-year-old television sets are herded together on the counters for curious Electricity Class students to tear into and explore. In need of repair, large board games for Karnival Kapers, our school's big fundraiser, lie haphazardly all over the floor. Only the chemicals are stored carefully away - otherwise every item from every garage sale and science fair litters Mr. Kayl's room. First time visitors are visibly shocked when they enter the science room, and Pat sheepishly scratches his head.

"Gotta clean this damn room," he apologizes. "Maybe this summer."

Julie is every bit the hoarder also, but miraculously she and Pat know where everything is - both in their classrooms and at home - which is filled to the brim with every antique collectible you could think of.

In spite of the limited space in their stuffed-to-the-gills home, there's no place John and I and our friends would rather be than hanging out at the Kayls. One night at dinner, our good friend and principal Hugh Brandon steals little Andrea Kayl's pillow in its pristine Strawberry Shortcake pillowcase to lounge on the Kayls' living room floor. Seven-year-old Andrea is astonished to walk into the middle of her living room to see Hugh's big head squashing and mangling her beloved pillow.

"Dad!" she chastises Pat. "I told you NEVER to let Mr. Brandon use my Strawberry Shortcake pillow!" Then she bursts into tears, sprints out the front door, and hides under the old camper in the Kayls' driveway to cry her heart out.

Pat crawls on hands and knees under the low camper to apologize and gently soothe his enraged little daughter. It's the same voice he uses to soothe troubled parents, students and fellow teachers. Finally, Andrea comes back to the house to snatch her pillow from our big penitent school principal and return it to its proper place. Order is restored.

I don't know a happier family than the Kayls - until  the tragic loss of their 25-year-old son Eric in November, 1994.  Julie calls to tell me, and I can barely absorb the news. John and I immediately rush to their house, and I sit close to Julie on the couch gripping her hand. We stare at each other in wordless shock while John grabs Pat in an awkward hug. Then Pat shoves his hands into his pockets and cannot look up again from the floor.

I am afraid Pat and Julie will never come back to us. After many years, Julie makes peace with the death of her precious Eric, but Pat never does. It's the one broken piece of his life Mr. Kayl can't fix.

He and Julie continue to teach through the decades, and John and Andrea grow up to be  fine, exceptional people. Andrea, in spite of a visual impairment like her mother's, becomes a college professor in Las Vegas, and John joins the military, marries his lovely Darcy, and gives Pat and Julie three grandchildren. More than anything, Pat's kids and grandkids offer him comfort.

Pat and Julie's grandchildren: Ava, Balen and Edwin.

In 2011 when Pat and Julie decide to retire, I can hardly take it in.

"I suppose I'll never see you again," I whine to Julie. Life at Grand Island Central Catholic without Pat and Julie Kayl seems unthinkable. I am a little inconsolable.

"No, never," she shoots back. "Our friendship is now completed. Good luck and godspeed," she jokes.

They enjoy retirement, but Pat is always back at school to help with Karnival Kapers, Husker Harvest Days and the never ending quirks of the sound system.

I can almost imagine, even though a new science teacher inhabits the spaces of his old classroom, that Pat is still here. To see him roaming the hallways is familiar and safe and comforting.

Last year, however, he loses weight and begins to feel weary. Not long after he's diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma. Julie is upbeat and positive - she always is - and can make us believe Pat will be fine. Their good friends and neighbors Les and Dee Lucht drive them to doctor appointments and take care of their yard. Julie assures us Pat will soon be driving and mowing his own lawn.

"All is well!" she chimes.

Except it's not.

A few weeks ago, Pat catches pneumonia. It's only a slight case, Julie says, but Pat's fragile body cannot fight it. In a matter of days he's unresponsive and attached to a ventilator. His good children, John and Andrea, arrive immediately and sit with Julie who sleeps on the little couch near Pat's hospital bed every night. They are with him when the ventilator is removed. Pat takes three breaths and leaves forever this world and all of us.

We receive word of Pat's death at school, and after the day is over I make my way down to Mr. Kayl's old room. Standing in the doorway, I smell and take in the empty classroom. Even though it's inhabited by another teacher now and so clean I can barely stand it, it's still and always will be Mr. Kayl's classroom. I can see him in front of his chalk board scribbling undecipherable words from edge to edge before he scratches his head and loses himself looking out the window at other unseen worlds.

Pat Kayl, 1946 - 2017

Pat Kayl is our saint - not a saint in the usual sense, like the ones who have visions and hear God's voice instructing them to build Cathedrals. Instead he is our flawed, beer-drinking, cigarette smoking, muttering, grumpy, much loved old saint. Mr. Kayl is the kind of saint who drops everything to help you out of a jam, makes every student feel like his own kid, and who would offer any one of us the threadbare, stained, untucked shirt off his back.

Goobye for now, Old Man. Don't forget us.

And keep your damn room clean.

Uncle Carl

Sometimes Uncle Carl drives us crazy. Like the time he comes all the way from Pittsburgh and persuades us to stage a mini opera.

Uncle Carl makes balloon animals for his great nieces.

My little brothers are not remotely interested in opera. I am ten-years-old, however, and dying to play the part of the long suffering Mimi who dies in her lover's arms. That my lover Rudolfo is also my little brother Joe slightly diminishes the thrill, but I’m willing to overlook it for the role of a lifetime.

Uncle Carl rehearses with us in the basement barely concealing his irritation at my brothers’ less than adequate performances. Suddenly his eye is caught by a large stain on the ancient Persian carpet. It’s the very carpet that Uncle Carl himself made as a gift to Mom and Dad.

“My God,” he moans and places a hand over his heart. Uncle Carl is often dramatic like this.  “What's that?” he points to the offending stain.

Our four-year-old sister Debbie, lounging on the battered old basement sofa, follows his gaze. “That’s where Duchess had puppies,” she offers agreeably before jamming her two favorite fingers back in her mouth.

Uncle Carl is livid, and the opera is forgotten before it even begins. My brothers are delighted, but I’m fairly crushed not to inhabit the character of the doomed Mimi.

A lifelong bachelor, Uncle Carl takes care of our Grandmother Brown in Pennsylvania but commits to visiting us regularly - mainly, we suspect, because he regards us as uncivilized hoydens. Uncle Carl makes it his mission to refine us.

“Happy hour!” he sings out at three o'clock on summer afternoons, and we tumble from our rooms or from outdoors to indulge in a fizzy soft drink served on a tray with sweet cookies arranged artfully on the side. Everything is a gala event when Uncle Carl arrives. Tall and cosmopolitan with an elegant eastern accent, he introduces us to a world of crystal goblets, napkin rings and linen table cloths. Before bed, we line up at the bottom of the staircase for “Penny, Penny, Who’s Got the Penny?” Whenever we correctly guess which of Uncle Carl’s fists conceals the penny, we progress up the stairs until one of us reaches the top and is jubilantly declared the winner. He makes balloon animals, has all the time in the world for a game of Monopoly, and marches us around the block like tin soldiers.

We adore Uncle Carl.

If we don't always appreciate his determination to refine us, we do look forward to the big Christmas box he sends without fail every year. Filled with individually wrapped gifts for each of us, it's always the last box we open at Christmas time. The Hamers, our only cousins and a family of seven boys residing on the other side of the country, receive an equally large box. All year long, Uncle Carl combs thrift stores, white elephants and yard sales collecting presents and mementos that eventually will be wrapped and stuffed in our Christmas box. In addition, every member of our large extended family - aunts and uncles and second cousins - receives birthday, anniversary and Valentine cards. Uncle Carl forgets no one. Even as we grow older, marry and produce children and grandchildren of our own, Uncle Carl is meticulous about recording names and births for inclusion in the Christmas box.

"I'm still waiting for those names," he calls to scold me one day shortly before Thanksgiving. During one productive year, several of my nieces and nephews have become parents, and I've forgotten my promise to record the names of Uncle Carl's newest great, great nieces and nephews. Uncle Carl's reminded me on three different occasions, and rather than face his wrath, I make up fictitious names for three new babies.

"Why does Uncle Carl think our grandchildren are called Miranda and Kevin?" my brother Rick stares at me accusingly the following Christmas Eve. I've forgotten all about the made up names. Rick laughs out loud at my discomfiture. "You don't even know the names of my grandchildren," he shakes his head.

"Don't tell Uncle Carl," I sigh.

The truth is, Uncle Carl tends to be just a tiny bit controlling. When my sisters and I get married, he kindly offers to make floral arrangements. We don't realize the hefty price to be paid for this generous offer. Uncle Carl not only takes charge of the flowers but everything else besides. Before Deb's wedding, he orders all of us out to the river to collect green foliage for the altar at St. Mary's Cathedral. We have no idea what we're picking. If it's green, we stuff it into giant garbage bags and obediently haul it to the church. Uncle Carl completely ignores the elderly pastor who tells him that under no circumstances are wedding decorations permitted on the altar and, behind the old priest's back, creates a magnificent arch of greenery precisely around the forbidden area. Father is furious when he discovers the arrangement too late and nearly speechless when, during the ceremony, he spies marijuana leaves skillfully woven through the arrangement.

In spite of his high handedness, we never doubt Uncle Carl's devotion to us. He flies from Pennsylvania in a thunderstorm to be with us for our mother's funeral, and twenty years later he rushes to our sides for Dad's. He even comes from Pennsylvania one year for Rick's high school graduation and my college graduation. In all the craziness, our baby brother Jeff, who's just completed kindergarten, is nearly forgotten by everybody except Uncle Carl.

"Da, da da da, DA DA!" Uncle Carl sings out the notes to "Pomp and Circumstance" as Jeff, with grave dignity, marches through the back yard. Uncle Carl throws a party right there, and we all congratulate Jeff on his remarkable achievement.

This coming March, Uncle Carl will turn 90. He's begged us time and time again to visit him in Pittsburgh, and at last I promise him we will come for his 90th. But a few weeks ago, on a warm October afternoon, Aunt Patty calls me from her home in Virginia with sad news. Uncle Carl has died.

"A stroke," she says hoarsely. I catch the controlled emotion in her voice. My 87-year-old aunt, Dad and Uncle Carl's younger sister, is the last remaining sibling. I'm glad Uncle Steve and her strong sons are nearby.

Our stepmother Kris Nolan Brown with Aunt Patty Hamer.

We've not all been to Pittsburgh together since a long ago visit in 1968. At the time I am 13, and Tom and Jeff aren't even born. Mom and Dad board all eight of us on a TWA jet bound for Pittsburgh, our first airplane trip ever. Grouped together in the rear, we enthusiastically explore air vents and overhead lights as Mom, with our baby sister Caroline on her lap, threatens that if we don't settle down, she will "turn this plane around and head right back home". Upon our arrival in Pittsburgh, we squash into two taxi cabs and careen under the hills through the Fort Pitt Tunnel before bursting forth from darkness. Just like that Pittsburgh rises before us - a city of steel, lights, and skyscrapers glowing in the night sky. The great Allegheny River meets the Monongahela to form the majestic Ohio River, and one day soon Uncle Carl will disperse pennies among us to toss into the waters where the rivers meet as one.

The Hamers. From left: Ken, Brian, Uncle Steve, Aunt
Patty, Pete and Tim.

Mom and Dad are long gone, but here we are, nearly 40 years later, careening through the same Fort Pitt Tunnel. Abruptly, the skyline appears to conquer the black night with its light studded brilliance, and Uncle Carl feels very near. Our loyal stepmother Kris accompanies us along with our young stepbrother Nolan and his sweet wife Brianne.

Mark, Uncle Carl's roommate for the last four decades and the most important person in his world, meets us at the door of the funeral home. He's a lovely man who composedly greets us and all Uncle Carl's friends. At last we find our adored Aunt Patty and Uncle Steve. Tim, Peter and Kenny, our kind, handsome cousins, are there, too. Brian will arrive tomorrow, but our cousins Stephen and Kevin, like our own siblings Terri, Carry and Jeff, are unable to attend. We long for the missing members of our family - living and dead. Paul Solomon, however, Dad's cousin who always makes us laugh, is thankfully here.

In front of Uncle Carl's Pittsburgh apartment. Bottom row from left: Nolan and
Brianne Clare, Brian Hamer. Second row from left: Paul Solomon, Mary Brand,
Joe Brown. Top row from left: Ken Hamer, Pete Hamer, Tom Brown, Deb
Durning, Rick Brown, Cathy Howard and Mick Brown.

When at last we've caught up with each other's news and all the guests have departed, we stand together to gaze upon the body of our brother and uncle. Aunt Patty, in her wheel chair, sits silently, her great blue eyes brilliant with emotion. Uncle Carl's face is unlined and almost youthful. Only recently has his dark hair finally turned gray. He seems remarkably the same, and I can hardly believe we will never again hear his elegant voice.

Three o'clock happy hours, "Penny Penny, Who's Got the Penny", and Christmas boxes now become cherished childhood memories, and with the passing of Uncle Carl comes the passing of an era. My cousins and siblings and I feel it keenly. For all our lives, Uncle Carl's filled our unremarkable days with light and brilliance and sometimes high drama.

He is like his beloved Pittsburgh - the explosion of light at the end of the tunnel. In an instant, the world glows bright with promise. There are presents to open, operas to perform, plans to be made.

And for a little while, anything is possible.