John Paul Jurewicz

John Jurewicz Obituary

Of Roxbury, MA. died suddenly on July 19, 2007. Beloved husband of Paula (Stagman) Jurewicz of Roxbury. Devoted stepfather of Michael Brooke of Philadelphia. Loving son of Marion (Rudis) Jurewicz of Scranton, PA and the late John J. Jurewicz. Dear brother of Nancy Swartz of Rockville, MD., Sandy Sames and Lisa Nasiatka both of Moscow, PA. Family and friends are invited to gather at the Frank A. Welsh & Son's Funeral Home, 718 Broadway, CHELSEA on Saturday July 28, at 10:00 AM. Graveside Funeral Services will be held in Forest Hill's Cemetery, Mattapan at 11:00 AM. Late MIT Alumnus Class of '81. Frank A. Welsh & Sons Chelsea, MA617-889-2723

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Published by Boston Globe on Jul. 25, 2007.

Memories and Condolences
for John Jurewicz

1 Entry

Dave deBronkart

July 25, 2007

Well, crap: John Jurewicz is dead.

I didn't spend lots of time with him in school but I sure worked with him enough to know that there was nobody else like him. Plus, we'd reconnected repeatedly in recent years.

John started at MIT a year ahead of me. For the school paper, he covered Janis Joplin's first Boston concert just after she broke up with Big Brother and the Holding Company. In a rap session afterward, Sam Andrew (bass of Big Brother) turned to him and said 'You don't look like an MIT student.' Twice.

At the same concert Jurewicz heard one of Johnny Winter's first public performances and wrote (at age 20), 'Watch these gentlemen.'

During the riots of the Vietnam protest years, when some of us still couldn't believe what was happening in our country, he wrote persuasive lyrical descriptions of sky blue riot helmets as their wearers swung clubs against the heads of 20 year olds who in some cases were literally just standing there. (I saw it myself; it was what crushed my naive belief that my country was always right, along with all its employees, no matter what they did.)

During the apocryphal 'Paul is Dead!' folly, John and I stepped in and co-wrote the article with all the clues that Paul was dead. (The school paper is what got me into my career, which has had lots of publishing, typesetting and editing technology. This is a strong individual root I shared with John.)

I graduated on schedule (somehow) but John took more of a Wild Thing path, being a true hippie, guitar slung over his back.

He loved fonts, as do I, and he obsessed about finding the slickest possible technology, as do I, in my own way. Back in the days of MS-DOS, he developed a combination: fast/slick font software called Ultravision that made a much wider range of fonts available in 'plain old DOS,' and (as I recall) got a Technical Excellence award from PC Magazine - no small achievement!

(Perversely, he *then* went back and finished his degree, in '83. Ah, John: unstuck in time. Arrived at MIT in 1967, and took 16 years to get out the other end.)

A few years ago I hunted him down. We had a great Chinese buffet, and he ended up registering in the Landmark Forum - another connection. Then, last year, amazing coincidence: while job hunting I discovered he'd sold Ultravision to some of the people I work for now. Another touch.

This January I got my cancer diagnosis out of nowhere (kidney cancer, rare, hard to treat), and last month he got his: bile duct cancer, rare, hard to treat. Like me he did all the research he could, found the doctor with the most advanced treatment - a new surgery that's been done only once before, got it done.

And his treatment too was a success. But then, unlike me, within a week he died of complications. Less than a week ago - Weds 7/18. Crap: that means he was alive just a week ago tonight.

======

John's story on this earth is suddenly complete.

I have the feeling of being one of a flock of ducks. One gets shot down, one flies on. You can imagine it with sound effects, but it seems more effective silently, like the scene in the film Catch 22 where Yossarian discovers that his bombardier's been split open by flak. Bad, bad news, but the only sound is the cold merciless wind.

= = =

Just last Sunday in my journal I wrote about that era -- Woodstock and Alice's Restaurant, leading to all kinds of reflections about life and death. And now along comes Jurewicz, punctuating it with a perfect blissed-out back flip, smack into the middle of the punchbowl, where everyone is sure to notice....and get the point.

I will see you on the other side, JJ. And you better have your gold paint-tipped calligraphy pens ready.