Born on August 15, 1940 in Youngstown, Ohio to John S. Kalasky and Mary Salata, John lived 83 years before peacefully passing in his Riverton, Utah home on November 18, 2023. John is married to Beatrice and has been for 62 years. He brought two children into the world: James and Jennifer. He was predeceased by his brother Ken and is survived by his sister, Eileen, and brother, Ed. He has four grandchildren: Jacob, Grant, AnnMarie, and Drew.
Everyone knew John as "Pops". This wasn’t a term of endearment, but a title he earned for years of overzealous and sometimes reckless but legendary behavior. He was an adventurer at heart, often doing things he probably should not have been doing.
Pops was a retired aerospace engineer, who worked at all the big aerospace companies: Lockheed, Martin Marietta, MacDonald Douglass, and finally Boeing – which he had few kind words for. His interest in space started as a young boy in his crater-filled backyard, where he launched explosive-fueled model rockets into the stratosphere.
Pops was also an avid scuba diver, notorious amongst Southern California dive-boat skippers for his hunting ability and larger-than-life dive tales. If you spent more than ten minutes with him, he would regale you with several of his stories from what seemed to be a never-ending catalog. Oftentimes at the end of his dives, you would find him hundreds of yards from the boat, slowly kicking back with a game bag full of lobsters or rock scallops.
Pops never did anything halfway. In both his California homes, one in San Jose and another, much smaller, stamp-sized lot in Tustin, he grew a citrus orchard. He always shared his produce with the neighbors, who loved the fruit but had mixed feelings about the tree overgrowth in their yards. When he and his wife, Beatrice, moved to Riverton, he started a "small" garden in a much bigger backyard. He took classes, became a master gardener, and grew produce that won several blue ribbons in the Utah County Fair. He fed the neighborhood with fresh vegetables and stocked the local food bank on many occasions.
Pops fit several lifetimes’ worth of activities into his one. In addition to being an aerospace engineer, scuba diver, and master gardener, he was a fisherman, skipper, hunter, hiker, skier, and mountain biker. Each of these activities carried multitudes of stories with them.
Pops talked to anyone about anything with a genuine, unabashed friendliness that few possess. People who know Pops can’t help but remember and love him. He was larger than life and will be dearly missed.
A memorial mass will be held Friday, November 24, 2023 at 2:00 PM at St. Andrews Catholic Parish 11835 South 3600 West, Riverton, Utah.
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