The OG Outlaw and a heck of a man

We recently said good-bye to a fearless leader, an OG Outlaw and a heck of a man.

I’ve written about my brother in-law John Knight before.

He joined the Biskupic family during the rockin’ summer of 1985, and cheerfully led our merry band of outlaws from that day forward. With his twin senses of purpose and humor, John taught us all how to navigate a big family of eloquent Croatians.

“He showed up for people,” his son Phil said at John’s crowded memorial service, full of people anxious to do the same for him.

John didn’t just show up, he rolled up his sleeves and went to work when he arrived. He liked to stretch out following a long road trip by doing yard work for his in-laws. He once spent the bulk of an Easter weekend helping my husband and me pack moving boxes, load up an old station wagon, and haul it all to our new apartment 100 miles away.

John showed us how to love unabashedly. He and his wife Carol wrote a love story for the ages. They met in Portland, Oregon as Special Olympics volunteers and quickly launched what became an international love affair. She accepted a teaching job in Germany, and they wracked up such astronomical phone bills it made both fiscal and emotional sense for him to join her there.

From there, they traveled the world.

Rather than tame their sense of adventure, the arrival of three kids and a move back stateside only intensified it. In 1991, John purchased his beloved Vanagon and began a tradition of summer road trips during which he drove his family roundtrip from coast-to-coast. He loved that Vanagon and treated it as well as any of his other family members. Together, they wracked up nearly 500,000 miles, including a couple of engine replacements.

Just as carefully and lovingly as John drove his family through those summer-long road trips, they guided him on his decade-long journey through early onset Alzheimer’s.

Though it slowly stripped him of his memory, that terrible disease could not touch dignity, thanks to the phalanx of family that surrounded him.

Each year at Valentine’s Day, rather than mourn the aspects of the relationship she lost as the disease progressed, Carol wrote John poems that celebrated all that remained.

That is the final lesson our OG Outlaw taught the rest of us.

It doesn’t matter how you leave this old world, it’s how you spent your time in it.

Love grows exponentially and leaves a remarkable trail when you and your Vanagon roll on.