Hrvoje "Deko" Lorkovic

Hrvoje Lorkovic

Iowa City - Hrvoje Lorkovic, 87, passed away at Firule Hospital in Split, Croatia on May 11, 2018 from complications following a stroke.

Lorkovic, known to his friends as Deko, was a researcher and lecturer at the department of Neurology at UI Hospitals and Clinics from 1968 - 1977. During a career spanning 5 decades between the 1950's to '90's from Zagreb, to Tübingen, London, Minneapolis, and Iowa City, retiring in Ulm, Germany, Lorkovic led research and published extensively in neurophysiology. In Iowa City, he once thrilled Mrs. Carlson's 4th grade class at Hoover Elementary by dissecting a worm and making its muscles twitch.

Science was Lorkovic's chosen career but his interests and passions ventured far beyond those boundaries. He was a gifted pianist, published author, prolific painter and photographer. His adeptness at interpreting the piano works of Bach was most significant in his musical abilities. Without stylistic departure he evoked tremendous tone and emotion from a genre often dryly and pedantically interpreted.

Lorkovic's writing career began in Iowa City. His family befriended the Yugoslav contributors of the International Writers Workshop. The writers, both international and domestic, were frequent guests of the Lorkovic family home and in their company he began his first novel, 'Karakteristika,' a memoir of coming of age in WWll wartime and postwar Yugoslavia. Initially self-published, 'Karakteristika' was eventually read broadly in Croatia and Germany.

Lorkovic was an avid mountaineer and skier, inspiring his friends and family in scaling and descending numerous peaks in the Rocky Mountains and the Alps, or any decently sized snow-covered hill in the farmland around Iowa City. As a canoeist, he paddled his family throughout the greater part of the extensive Mississippi watershed in and around Iowa, often hitchhiking to get back to the car. Throughout his life, he rarely let a day go by without a significant outdoor adventure.

His last days (prior to the stroke) were marked by a deeper and deeper involvement with music.

Lorkovic is survived by his wife Brigitte of Ludwigshafen am Bodensee, Germany, children Maja, Radoslav and Ivan (all Iowa City High School graduates, classes of 1974, 1975 and 1985, respectively) and their mother, Tatjana Lorkovic, a longtime Iowa City resident and his brother Radovan.